Farewell, JiTong Steam

New Diesel Locomotives

Ten new diesel engines are ready for collection in Dalian and are only waiting for the receipt of their official numbers. These are registered centrally for all the railways in China except for factory and forestry railways. Because the numbering commission doesn’t work during the Chinese holidays from the 1st to the 7th of October, no numbers could be registered. It will be a little longer before the engines are actually collected. In Daban they aren’t counting on new engines before the 15th. The other engines should arrive before the 1st of November. After this date there will still be some steam workings, but these should cease before the end of the year.

The newly delivered diesels show a high rate of wheel wear and subsequent rail wear. Several machines had to be taken out of service because of this problem. This lead to nearly 100% steam between Daban and Chabuga in early October. The JiTong railway has already ordered three more DF4B’s which together with the ten new engines will enable the total abolition of steam. To achieve this with a fairly small number of engines there will be no more loco changes between Daban and Baiqi. Haoluku will become a normal station. Also the trainloads will be increased, which will reduce the amount of double header workings. These often aren’t even necessary at the moment, but only occur because there are plenty of steam engines and crews around looking for work. 2500 tonne trains for example get two QJ’s, where removing three wagons and reducing the load to 2300 tonnes would enable one QJ to handle it.

Lanqi

The hope the new line Sanggendalai - Lanqi will be opened with steam has disappeared. Because the new diesels will already be in service in 2005 and the line won't be opened before January 2006, they will find ways to manage without steam. We've been told that the new line will not be a branch of the JiTong railway, but that they will operate the existing section to Xilinhaote for the time being, at least until the section is completed.

Investments

The planned takeover of the JiTong railway by China railways (the state railways) won't be pursued any more. Because of the forced dieselisation, they have had to take out so many loans that they have become unattractive for China rail. And even more loans will be needed to become profitable again, as a lot of work will have to be done to enable the trainloads to be increased even further. In many stations the tracks need to be extended and new passing loops added. The loans need to be repaid out of operational profit (which no longer exists). The losses are covered by the provincial government. The state is not compelled to help out.

Semaphore signals will disappear shortly. In Baomuto and Dariqiga the new colour light signals where already in place and will be put into service soon.

In the depot of Daban all remains of the steam area are being removed. Buildings are being painted bright yellow. New cleaning installations for diesels are being erected. The sanding installation has already been removed. A large fuel depot is being build at the north side. New white plastic fuelling shelters are also being built. The depot is only barely recognizable as a steam depot. No engines where present in the shed. All were either in service or in steam in front of the shed. The QJ's seem to be performing without problems. We experienced no breakdowns. We did however see a DF4 (9010) grind to a halt two kms outside of Daban. It had to roll back to the station, but reappeared after some small repair an hour later.

Can QJ's Attract Tourists?

They want to keep five steam engines in working condition for tourist trains. Only QJ7038 and 7081 (with recent main exams) have been selected so far. The first tour will be early November (see GW Travel and IGE Bahntouristik). Because of the prohibitively high price the JiTong railways charges (US$ 30.000 for one train pair), they won't find too much custom for these engines. The special workings planned for the 8th to the 10th of October by a Chinese operator have been cancelled due to the high price. Reasons given for not reducing the price were "no coal in Haoluku" and "no water in Jingpeng". These are typical Chinese excuses for not doing something simply because the don't want to, even though it could be done without problems. Europeans won't ever understand why they don't want the extra income from tourism while they're short of funds.

Allocation Daban depot per 10.08.2005