QJ STEAM LOCOMOTIVE ACTION IN THE DESERT OF WESTERN CHINA
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ก.ย. 2023
- The section of the rail line between Baotou and Lanzhou was operated by steam locomotives of the QJ 2-10-2 class in 1994. The section south of the town of Zhongwei on the Yellow River was of particular interest to railfans. The long 30 mile grade out of the river valley to high desert offered many opportunities for making video of steam working hard. Here are some scenes from October of that year.
Beautiful footage of those Chinese working steam locomotives. I travelled to China in 1985 but was unfortunately unaware of this awesome action which I would have loved to have filmed myself. And it is wonderful that so many people are putting their steam train footage on TH-cam from all over the world. Hopefully you will have more. Thank you for posting. Greetings from the Train Lord in South Australia.
3 of the QJs are preserved here in the states: Iowa Interstate 6988 and 7081 in the Quad Cities area and RJ Corman 2008 (formerly 7040) in Kentucky.
Congratulations, Ron, beautifully shot. What memories this brought back. We were there just two months after you, when the trackside holes for the electrification masts were being dug, and even found that, during some nights, masts had been dropped into holes. Your locations were quite familiar to me: I even set up my tripod on the same hillock as you, in the penultimate shot. As i guess you did, we covered other great locations as well.
Being there at such a time was a marvellous experience, wasn't it. Thanks for uploading.
Thanks for the kind comment. First time I was there it was single track.
The locomotive engineers on this line were amazingly skilled. Train tonnage always seemed to be maxed out for the two engines. Trains stalling on the hill were not uncommon and we see one in this video backing down to restart after stalling out on a curve.
The stokers had been disconnected on these engines so necessarily hand fired. There were two firemen and sometimes one had to be on the tender coal pile moving coal forward. If you look carefully at the evening scene where the train is coming straight at the camera you can see a man on top of the tender moveing coal.