China steam finale - Beitai steelworks September 2011
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
- This video features steam locomotives at work in an iron and steel works in China. Beitai is 14 km south-west of Benxi and Benxi is 84 km south-east of Shenyang.
Beiying Iron & Steel (Group) Co., Ltd is the holding subsidiary of Beitai Iron & Steel (Group) Co., Ltd. This company is located in Beitai Town, Pingshang District, Benxi City. It is an iron and steel complex incorporating mining, ore dressing, coking, power generation, sintering, iron-making, steel-making and rolling. Its annual production capacity of pig iron is 8.5 million tons, steel billet 9 million and finished steel product 10 million tons. The company has blast furnaces with total volume of 6100 cubic meters and steel converters with gross tonnage of 560 tons. It annually produces 1.5 million tons of steel bars , 3.5 million tons of wire rods, 1 million tons of medium strip and over 4 million tons of hot rolled coil.
The Beitai steelworks is located alongside the Chinese National Railway line from Liaoyang to Benxi. The site consists of two separate plants. To the east is the blast furnace area and about five kilometres further west is the steel making plant. A fleet of SY class steam locomotives is employed in and around the two plants, shunting raw materials into the blast furnace area, taking trains of molten iron to the steelworks and bringing back trains of raw materials, and dumping hot slag. Exchange sidings with the CNR exist at both sites.
Official visits are now possible in organised groups, at least when you have the right contacts. Security is tight, so illegal entry is strongly discouraged.
There are 3 groups of blast furnaces, two groups are served by steam. There are numerous diesels. Steam will probably be phased out slowly.
The steam site at Beitai is quite small compared with the former steam fleets of works at Anshan, Panzhihua, Benxi or Baotou. But Beitai remains a rare survivor of industrial steam in the steel industry. Go there before it is too late!
With thanks to Tanago tours. This video may not be seen in Germany for music copyright reasons. The music is Industriial Revolution part 1 by Jarre.
MARCH 2012 UPDATE
The Beitai steel works is currently building a group of new blast furnaces at the new plant, just aside the old steel mill. Once the new blast furnaces are operational (planned for end of 2012), the steel works will have enough capacity to shut down the old plant. As the new plant will use automated transportation and diesel locomotives, it will also mean the end of the use of SY steam locomotives.
Tanago has visited the steel works four times now, establishing an excellent relationship with the local management, that even allowed us to visit the mill´s running shed.
Tanago will return to Beitai later this year for a - most likely - last visit of the steam locomotives at the blast furnces, the slag trains, and fantastic night photography opportunities.
Please see part 2 here:
• China steam finale - B...
Copyright Stephen Wolstenholme
That workplace at 7:20 looks epic! Modern TFT computer monitor and real non-heritage steam locomotives in the background.
amazing a train buff dream...not only their not museum working trains their actual real working engines...gives you a taste of back in the day
Brilliant vid - Makes a change to see a vid that isnt shaking around all over the place ! A very well put together event. Thanks - look forward to the next ones.
Chinese Steam can be sold to the US Railroads:
Pan Am Railways.
Iowa Interstate Railroad
Alaska Railroad and more.
Plus tourist railroads and museums in the US.
steam engines do not always go slow. in fact locomotives in the united states in the lesser half of the 20th century routinely hauled freight and passengers at speeds over 100 mph. Also a typical large class steam loco is much more powerful than any diesel or electric loco even today. They just cost more to operate.
I really enjoyed this video. A good mix of the trains and the industrial process.
Very impressive sir brilliant video all 5 of them thank you.
These trains are just shunting heavy, hot loads over short distances within a works. Speed is not important.
What a fabulous, hellish place !!
Thanks. It was the greatest railway and filming experience of my life! Sadly, the blast furnaces have been demolished and steam is long gone.
The actual last tour is Feb 2013. All but 1 QJ locomotive is still running. This will be the final year for steam engines in China.
Awesome vid...wonder what the maintenance of the trains was like...
This is really terrific, what a great steam scene
I watched this vid three times. Very fascinating.
Great video. Thanks for posting it up.
Awesome video - thanks for taking the time to put it together for us.
No heritage railways as we know them in the UK, but some narrow gauge steam is now run as a tourist line.
Crazy to think Shinra is still operating at such a high capacity.
Enjoyed this video. Thank you
Kinda looks like Wheeling, West Virginia, especially with all of those Mikado locomotives running around... USATC S-200 design morphed into the SY class...
Kinda looks great to me! Might be Lackawanna, NY or Gary, Indiana back when you had a decent economy in America.
g bridgman Still looks like some of the Gary Works of US Steel if you substitute diesels for the steamers. Right now they're shutting down some of the furnaces for repair, others will be torn down(or so the local news says). But, steelmaking is changing and the companies that don't change also will end up being footnotes in history. On the one hand I don't miss all the stack gasses being blown our way but it saddens me to see the loss of good-paying jobs in the Gary/East Chicago area and the rise of crime spilling over from Chicago.
That's the key to it all: Good jobs. Workers made out real well with jobs in the steel, auto, railroad, and other manufacturing industries. today everyone's taking in laundry and turning out hamburgers. How are you supposed to maintain a standard of living on minimum wage at Wal-Mart when you used to work in a factory for $30-40/hour? A few at the top still make a killing while most suffer. It's a damn shame. I don't know what to say about the pollution thing. It's either that or minimum wage at a department store.
For people to have those good jobs, their prospective employers need to be making money...
$30/hr in a steel mill isn't all that much in pay, but when the Chinese are making steel for 1 - 2 RMB per ton in profits, or even 100 RMB, your job is extinct... (Look up "zombie companies" in the Chinese steel industry especially)
When the government takes more in taxes than a manufacturer can sell the product for - in the US & Europe, for example - in the UK for certain - you get a rust-belt where you *used* to have industry...
Real nice scenario isn't it? Government puts us out of business!
A very impressive movie. Thanks for sharing.
wish i could ride along one of these trains for a day and take pictures, so much stuff, so much going!
would be awesome to see them alongside the new High speed trains in Beijing as a final sendoff, if they are the same gauge of course. China is a land of huge differences.
Very interesting video, good camerawork, thanks for uploading
Such a fascinating place full of interesting sights sounds and smells 👍🏼
Most of these steelworks were built from plamts shipped from France and Begium in the 1990s
I know china doesnt use QJs anymore but do they still use SYs?
Great vid, thanks for sharing.
great footage
Some awesome scenery there.
Awesome, if they only would have it like that in Europe still..
Excellent video, thank
This is absolutely amazing! Is it any wonder they're running circles around us these days?
Some are built to go slowly, like heavy shunting engines. Some are fast, like Mallard at 126mph, or Blue Peter in 1994, who accidentally had a valve-gear-shattering 140MPH slip.
I dont mean to be rude, but if this video is banned in Germany just because of the music, do you not think it would be benifical to get rid of the song? It only lasts 2:08 minutes, and the entire video is 14:35. Even more the sound track of this whole video is amazing, i think the song slightly ruins it. Great video none the less, it had me zoned in for 15 minutes nearly!
Would the plant sell any of their SY locomotives since they're not going to use them after a certain date?
Awesome video
good video,,i hope they save the locos,,
Great video. No ridiculous and unnecessary music added. I wonder if they were loading NZ West Coast coal into the loco tender?! China is the major buyer, and it's interesting to see the end use to which it is put. One thing that struck me in this clip; nobody seemed to be rushing around with frenetic haste. I know that the commodity being handled is unforgiving of mistakes, but the preconceived picture of China is that humanity is of secondary importance to production.
The music of heavy industry is enough, remove the music and you won't risk account suspension for copyright violation. Excellent video though.
Wounderful!
капец, пейзаж один в один как в Мариуполе. И ковши такие же. Одно только что паровозы вместо тепловозов.
very great Video!
Some time ago I saw a video of these western train watchers that went to China to record the trains there because they heard that China was still running and producing steam engines. In the provinces they recorded at the local police gave them a hard time, even though they had been given permission, because the local police thought they were spies because they couldn't believe that anyone would want to record trains.
If the Chinese knew how starved we are for real trains in this great United States, maybe then they'd understand.
Excepcional, parabéns por este vídeo profissional e bem interessante.
Da wird noch richtig gearbeitet..!!💪
...Apprezzato!*****
I subscribe your channel.
Ciao!
What would it be like if they made a counterpart of Challenger or Big Boy? Does'nt China have enough coal or resources to even get those running?
I think i found 2 people wareing face protection..How manny Loungs are coffed...hackout???
Very Nice!
7:24 I would love to have an office window like that!
Great video, would be better without music
An EPA rep would lose his mind in this place.
why do you think american heavy manufacturing crumbled
Hey it one of 142 sisters
so is steam done for?
how to get on official visit?
Might have been U.S. Steel or Bethlehem years ago. All be can do not is take in laundry and turn out hamburgers. I gotta give these Chinese guys a lot of credit! It's awful what's happened to American industry!
hoorah ive heard true or not china is keeping its steam fleet i hope so because china is like me loves its steam iam a stournch steam supporter .
many many thanks bud glad to see that steam is still alive in parts of china many thanks for the reply bud many thanks.
why do steam engines go so slow
You cannot operate a steel mill in the USA without pollution controls, there were none on any of the operations that were shown.
How many people are killed there annually?
very good
What song was that in the beginning
Ethan Trainz Industrial Revolution Part 1 by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra th-cam.com/video/JMPlUzBv4fo/w-d-xo.html
4:50 That's tough.
かっこええ…
great a steam engine with a car horn. thought i saw it all
And what i see here? old russian steam loco :) NICE :) the same we had in Lithuania till 70s :)
the one wich was restored by us on my channel watch?v=2dYyAs9blV0
To jest magia.
tecnologia obsoleta y super-contaminante .
Most European doesnt nou that steam engine in China make his green cars🤔
Can we see some videos of reakl steelworks? this cheap made in china crap...................................
This is really terrific, what a great steam scene