Interested in Working Steam?

Interested in working steam? Want to visit China? John Raby has a list of reasons why you should join his tour to Sichuan Province which visits the Shibanxi line that runs from 5-15 March 2012.

"1. It's the place I chose for my 60th birthday last year because it's one of the best narrow gauge steam railways (real or preserved) in the world
2. real steam ng, trains in a landscape, friendly people, good food
3. walk everywhere and anywhere
4. no cars
5. the nicest place I know in China
6. some great little locos that think they are big, working their socks off
7. passenger, coal traffic, tourist trains, additional cargoes – pigs, refrigerators, brick, bamboo (and even corpses!)
8. five tunnels to walk through (bring a torch) and 1 reversal
9. electric coal trains and steam under the wires on the bottom section
10. haircut in Bagou, stay with the doctor in Mifeng
11. hiking trails with views of the line in the hills between Sanjing and Huangcun
12.small coal mine at Huangcun with hand tramming (and 300mm and 600mm gauge)"


This is the second time that this tour has run, so you can read about the 2011 trip on John Raby's blog. Even if you cannot take the trip, I recommend reading the blog just for the pictures and perspective on life in small-town China.

The fully refundable deposit for the tour is 400 British pounds with the tour itself priced in Chinese yuan. The main tour costs 11,000 yuan for 10 nights and is to be paid in China at the start of the tour or my bank transfer to the Chinese guide, Zebedee. Minus the £400, that means ¥7,000 will need to be paid in China. All meals, transportation, and tours are included in this price. Most of the rooms will be singles, although you will need to pay a small surcharge to guarantee a single room every night. Tour arrangements assume that participants will fly into and out of Chengdu in western China. Apparently, this is easy for people coming from the UK, but may be more of challenge (and more expensive) if you are coming from the US.

Both pre and post tours are available at an additional, reasonable cost. (At current exchange rates, this entire tour costs less than $1,800.)

The deadline to book is February 1. Contact John Raby at jraby at linesiding.co.uk if you are interested in more information.

Upcoming rail trips to Asia

There are two rail trips being planned that I know about. The first is ground transit only with no flights within the country being visited. The second only has a single flight.

In March, John Raby is hosting a trip to the Leshan region in southern Sichuan to ride on a steam passenger line as well as visit coal railways in the area. The tour will be kept small (10 people max) to allow all participants to directly experience China and to encounter regular people along the way. This is very much an unpackaged tour and as such involved lots of real Chinese food and the ability to walk up to 10km a day over uneven surfaces. The trip also involves lots of flowers along the track; the trip is being planned for the beginning of March for flowers and the (possibly) good weather.

Shibanxi and Mojiang Narrow Gauge Coal Railways 7 - 17 March 2011

ends and starts in Chengdu, Sichuan Province

aprox. £ 1000 ($1550)

Airfare from London (through Amsterdam) is available for £571.

Americans can get to Chengdu by flying to Beijing and then taking a train.

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Farrail is running a tour of steam engines used in the sugar industry. This tour is all rail except for a flight at the end from Surabaya to Jakarta. This trip would be good for someone who is interested in how things work.

China working on Silk Road 2.0

In the past few years, governments throughout Asia have worked together on the Silk Road project to create freight and passenger rail links between each other and Asia. A major links include a line Singapore through Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam then up north into China and a line though Russia into the central Asian countries that used to be part of the USSR to Iran and Turkey.

It looks like China may be looking to support rail links that bypass a couple of its traditional enemies. It looks like Chinese money is available to support a high-speed rail link with Thailand and an ordinary speed rail link to Vientiane, Laos. Both of these lines would run through Myanmar. They are also supporting a high-speed rail link between India and Pakistan.

The project that is probably farthest along is the project in Laos. Questions have arisen about the nationality of the workers and the origin of the goods that will be transported by the railways. If most of the workers who build the tracks are Chinese, and most of the goods that are transported are Chinese, some people wonder if this railway will actually benefit Laos.Some of these may be genuine concerns and some may be simple xenophobia.

I have concerns because China is loaning the money to Laos. These are not grants. Many underdeveloped countries are in trouble because they went into debt for projects that did not bring economic development. This is especially a concern for Laos because very few Laotians have the skills necessary to work on a project like this. Right now the plans are to import large numbers of Chinese rather than educate locals for these jobs.

Who is going to operate these trains when they are finished? It is my understanding that the train that connects the border near Vientiane with Thailand is actually run by the Thailand's railways. Now this railway has apparently spurred enough development in the area to pay for its construction. People who used to be subsistence farmers are now able to sell excess crops and some crafts. But these are people who are geographically close to major urban centers. Some people are in fact carrying their goods into Thailand rather than taking the train. Is similar development possible in more isolated areas?

I hope so. I also hope that the government of Laos acts in the best interests of its citizens and demands that China pay for infrastructure for which they are the primary beneficiaries. Laos should also look for other funding for any railways they would like to build. There are other sources of revenue.

Anyone going to Gansu?

I was talking with the owner of a Chinese restaurant in Portland, and I asked him if any of his American (or Korean or Canadian or etc.) friends had travled to China by train and would like to write about it. He asked me to encourage my readers to travel to Gansu in northwest China to help the economy there. The government of China is powerful, but the people are still struggling.

Gansu is beautiful and ethnically diverse. If you cannot visit, you can taste the food in Portland at Frank's Noodle 822 NE Broadway.

A Guide to Using the Shanghai Metro

Here is a guide to using the Shanghai Metro written by Ted and posted to the social networking site Multiply.

上海: Shanghai Metro

Shanghai Metro - longest in the world?

Currently, Shanghai claims that with the opening of line 10 last month, Shanghai Metro became the longest such system in the world.

Of course, that depends on what counts toward that total.

Not including portions run by Korail and Incheon Subway, Seoul's Metropolitan Subway system runs 314 km. However, that is counting some track that runs outside of the boundaries of the city of Seoul, and does not include some that is actually within the city's boundaries. So 314 km is too short. Counting every line that could possibly be considered part of the system, the subway is 755 km long. Of course, that ends up trips that never even enter the province where Seoul is located and that are between towns of less than 100,000.

So Shanghai runs a lot of trains that I hear are clean and fast, and you can probably go anywhere you might want to on them. But not necessarily any better than in, say, Paris, which strictly defines what is the metro and what are the suburban commuter trains.

(Also, the maglev to the airport is cool, but very few people take it because the maglev is more expensive than some airplane tickets and the ordinary subway is fast and comfortable enough for most people.)

Beijing to Shanghai

by Vladimir Pariev

I made my trip on Chinese trains in the Spring of 2009. The building of the main train station in Beijing is large, grey coloured in a monumentalistic Soviet style of architecture. There is a spacious square near the railway station. It is not far from the city centre. Metro exit is located on the other side of the square from the railway station. There is also quite good and not expensive hotel across the square from the railway station. Despite the large spaces the main feature of big railway stations in China are crowds of people. Especiallyso the Beijing station, since it is in the capitol of China and many train lines go in all directions from Beijing.

I was on the trip together with my friend. Another Chinese friend bought us train tickets in advance. In China a passenger would need a ticket to enter the train station. Tickets themselves are bought in another building close by. There is a temporary storage room for the luggage, where one can keep bags for a small fee. After entering the station a passenger is supposed to wait for his train in a waiting hall. There are many waiting halls according to the categories of the trains. We took the overnight Z train to Nanjing. The waiting hall for Z trains has many seats, so we got a seating for our wait. Other halls for lower class trains has too few seating places, so they were crowded with thousands of people standing or sitting on the floor. There are many shops inside the railway station selling snacks and drinks.

About half an hour before train departure time, passengers are asked to proceed to the platform. Tickets are checked once again. Z trains have compartments with four soft sleeping berths each, two berths below and two berths above. Sheets, pillows, pillow cases, blankets,

towels are included. There is also hot water and a clean toilet in the train. Some light food is sold on the board the train. The train went from Beijing to Nanjing without making any

stops for 9 hours journey. Despite quite high speed (more than 120 km per hour) the train was pulled by a Diesel locomotive, which I saw at the head of the train.

In the morning we arrived at Nanjing station, which is also quite large. We needed to show our tickets at the exit from the railway station again. There is a separate exit door from the platforms,which leads directly to the street. Once having passed through this door, a passenger cannot reenter the station without having another ticket for another train. It is not possible just to stay for a while inside the station without intending to actually board a train. We took express D train to Shanghai. The train was electric, fast, going at the speed up to 250 kilometres per hour, but making five stops, and it took us about two hours to get to Shanghai.

Shanghai railway station is also large and more modern than the station in Beijing. It is crowded too and it uses the same system of tickets purchasing and waiting rooms as in Beijing. In front of the railway station there is a road busy with traffic, but people criss cross at all times. The exit from the metro station is located on the other side of this road. The building for selling tickets is in about 200 metres from the railway station building and there are some other buildings and a road in between. So, it is not easy to guess quickly, without reading Chinese, where they sell the train tickets. There are a number of hotels close to the station

and we stayed in one of them, which was quite good. We took another Z train from Shanghai back to Beijing. The train took 11 hours of non-stop travel in the night. The train had the same interior as the Z train from Beijing to Nanjing, clean and quite comfortable.

As a side note, all our neighbours inside the compartment (all together4 people on both Z train trips) were males. I do not know, if it isdue to rules for selling tickets, or whether some females initiallyhad tickets in our compartment but then exchange their berths with males from another compartment,or if it has happened by chance (with probability 1/16). This is different from Russian trains, where males and females are usually assigned sleeping places at random, in any compartments.

Purchasing train tickets in China is somewhat difficult to do in advance. The tickets are sold not earlier than 10 days before thedeparture of the train, except for Z trains, when the tickets can be purchased 20 days before the travel date. It is easy to buy tickets while in China, either at a ticket office close to a railway station or in some travel agency. As my Chinese friend told me, it is wise to buy a ticket 2-3 days before the long distance trip in usual times and one needs to reserve tickets 10 days in advance during peak travel times in China, like the Spring festival. Suburban tickets are always available right before departure, if a passenger is willing to stand in the train. If one wants to buy tickets before coming to China, the Internet travel agencies charge high fees for this. Fees amount to 50 per cent of the cost of the fare itself. I could not find any cheap English language travel agencies, which would sell train tickets in advance to me and resorted to asking Chinese friends in China to get the tickets.