Construction of QJ`s in Datong

Your itinerary sounds very similar to the one we went on with TEFS in Dec,'84/Jan.85. The main differences would seem to be that we spent a day on 'Wang Gang' bank south of Harbin with lost of QJ activity on the Beijing mainline and didn't go to Tangshan but went to Fushun for the KD6's (S160). When I got home I showed Derek Foster the KD6 photos and he said "I've got to get myself one of them" and he did. Like you we were shepherded everywhere with little opportunity for independent exploration. Bill's first trip was in 1976, just days before the Tangshan earthquake, and even 8 years later Europeans were still seen as objects of friendly curiosity. Changchun depot and works were almost 100% steam then and the works manager put on a "simple meal" for us in the works canteen - simple being 14 courses with copious amounts of beer,wine and Mao Tei (Chinese rocket fuel). Who could forget the sheep's eyeballs! Must get round to scanning the slides but I'm only up to 1979 so far.
Cheers,
Ray.

 

Had some "interesting" food items on my visits but never sheep's eyeballs. I can't say I'm envious.

 

I did a similar trip to yours the year before and spent my 38th birthday photting on the marvelous Nancha bank. The hotel there was memorable for having no running hot water - they brought it up to your room in big containers. Even more memorable was the fact that they found out that it was my birthday and their local fire water flowed very freely that evening. Luckily the next day was dull and we had a leisurely special train booked on the nearby narrow gauge Lanxian Forestry Railway, so I was able to nurse my sore head in relative peace.

Interestingly we enjoyed a surprising degree of freedom from the authorities, providing we kept to the tour itiniary. We flew home just as the student unrest of the spring of 1989 was gathering pace, culmenating of course in the Tiananem Square standoff in the June - things tightened up considerably after that.

My next visit to Chine was to the JiTong line in 2003 and the changes in that time were huge.

Peter

 

Had the same in Weihe. The "hotel" was one floor of a block of flats. We had to visit the public baths for a shower - two to a cubicle.

 

I seem to remember Reshui which roughly translates to Hot Springs only had hot water for a short time each night.

 

in the Telecom hotel, the hot water and heating came from an external boiler house. Early one morning we woke up feeling rather chilly and found ice on the inside of the windows. A quick look outside revealed the boiler to have gone out and the guy gone home. So we had to put our thermal gear on to keep warm inside our hotel room. The joys of a trip to China.

 

The above, had been my understanding; without having read Mr. Clark's book. But -- yes; machine pictured, an FD not a QJ (external appearances could vary and be deceptive) -- viz., typo by the poster. That'll teach me to play the expert...

 

Not sure which loco you are referring to as an FD. Mick Pope's image is of QJ 1442. Peter Clark's book was extraordinarily good for its time (1983) but we now have rather better access to domestic Chinese material. Chinese sources suggest 1,054 FDs were purchased by China of which four were FD21s and the rest FD20s. As noted by @240P15, if you are interested, there is more info in my books. The FDs were re-gauged at Changchun, Mudanjiang, Changxindian (Beijing) and possibly Shenyang. I have not discovered how they moved 1524mm gauge locos to those works from the border crossings at Manzhouli and Erenhot though.

 

Sadly, financial constraints meant that I could never get to China to sample the last days of steam but at least I can get a bit of the flavour by watching the many videos on youtube and the like. As a tiny bit of compensation, I now have examples of all 3 of the standard steam loco models made by Bachmann China in HO (1/87 ) scale-QJ, JS and SY, plus a model of the Bachmann Europe WD Austerity 2-8-0 in OO ( 1/76 scale) representing one of those that were sent to the Kowloon Canton Railway just after the war. If you want one of the China models, they are as rare as rocking-horse droppings but do occasionally come up on ebay. However, if one does appear and you are thinking of buying it, I strongly recommend that you check out the very informative website "Chinese Model Trains"which has reviews of the models plus the good and bad points of the various production runs of the models-the site is worth a read anyway. The Austerities come up quite often if that's your interest.

If diesels are your thing, examples of the Chinese diesels (also made by Bachmann China in HO) appear frequently on ebay (there are some on there now), but again, check out the Chinese Model Trains website first before you buy.

Lastly, if you want something REALLY big, Bowande do several different versions of the QJ in either live steam or electric in Gauge 1 (1/32) if you have a big enough garden to run it or a big sideboard to display it!.

 

My bolding above: @huochemi -- I don't know what the Chinese is for "confusion reigns"; but that seems to be happening between yourself, @mickpop, @marshall5, and me ! Probably best that I just bow out... at all events, a highly interesting thread.

 

"Confusion reigns" is rather colloquial and I think one would translate it as "there is confusion everywhere". One could of course seek guidance from Chairman Mao's essay on the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People.

 

It was just a typo and only just noticed it since you posted. I was aware it was an FD. Sorry for causing confusion. Been without wifi for several weeks and have been rushing to catch up!

 

Tours of China abound with great stories. I did two with RT&P. On one we stayed at the company guest lodge at Langxiang on one of the ng logging lines. We were invited to the village social club -locals sat at tables in full overcoats and hats drinking green tea. It was very cold! There was some entertainment laid on and when this ended the MC announced 'Now we have entertained you it is now your turn to entertain us'. This produced the 'pass the brown trousers' effect among the assembled Brits. However someone had the bright idea of teaching the locals the game of 'Musical Chairs'. Once they got the hang of this they quite enjoyed it! I often wonder if some anthropologists went there today they would claim they had found the origins of the game!

 

Before they went bust obviously. Lou's financial collapse cost me a trip to the Romanian logging lines.
In China the guides were always looking for better deals - for them - with restaurants etc. We'd dine in a more than acceptable restaurant only to be told the next day that the food was no good and we'd he hauled of elsewhere for the next evening meal. Obviously the guide had found somewhere to give them a better back hander for bringing them custom.

 

On a culture day we were scheduled for a Mongolian hotpot lunch at the Great Wall restaurant in Bedaling. Unfortunately the beer was frozen in the bottles and the only way to melt it was to hold the bottles over the hot air/smoke coming from the burning charcoal which was inside the cauldron thingy that contained the hot pot. When we got up to leave my missus' gloves had frozen to the floor! One morning, up in Harbin during the Ice Festival. our minder greeted us with "It's much warmer today.... only minus 25!" We must have been lucky with the hotels we had as all were warm, too warm sometimes, and no shortage of hot water but we were in major cities, not out in the sticks.
Back in the 80's the Chinese didn't really understand the concept of 'single-use' items so one lady in our party, who had discarded a pair of used paper panties in one hotel bathroom, was extremely surprised to have then returned to her, washed and ironed, in the next hotel several hundred miles away! I could go on ... but will resist the temptation as we are getting well away from QJ's - sorry.
Ray.

 

My only visit to China was in summer 1996; a bit humdrum -- China Rail steam then definitely on the way out: you had to carefully pick your venue, and class variety was minimal -- QJ / JS / SY, that was all. An "independent" trip, myself and a companion (travelling by rail -- no alternative) -- an organised tour might have delivered better results, but we did what we did... our three weeks, spent over the 600 km. area east from Beijing. We were perhaps somewhat timid and wimpy: we got 200 km. east from Beijing, to Chengde; then (context of our hoped-for itinerary) lingered over-long in that city, which -- being a considerable "normal" tourist-trap, quite geared to Western-type comfort and with English widely understood there -- proved for us, something of a comfort zone: China Rail steam there only so-so (lots of steam freight, but no steam passenger except on one branch line; which we sampled); but the town had a wonderful steam-worked (JS and SY) steeply-graded industrial line, which absorbed us for a day or three...

We found -- for varied reasons -- travel on ordinary passenger trains in China, a bit of an ordeal; which maybe curbed our doings somewhat: after most of a week in Chengde, we gritted our teeth and headed further east into the "boondocks", to Yebaishou -- 25 years ago, one of China Rail's greatest-remaining steam bastions: a splendid scene, but virtually all-QJ. Spent a good many days there, valuing the steam action on the three / four routes out of the town: as at then, diesel locos just beginning to infiltrate; freight still almost all QJ, the majority of passenger had gone diesel, but a sizeable minority thereof still QJ. With long-distance passenger-train travel being found not altogether "a breeze": it came to our perception, rather to our discomfiture; that by our lazing-around in the comfortable environment further west, we had managed to shoot ourselves in the foot -- original plan had been a bit of time at Chengde, a bit of time at Yebaishou, then off far to the east to the scenic secondary-line network east of Shenyang, getting close to the North Korean border; where -- by then a rare thing in China -- the mostly-ubiquitous class QJ was not around: all traffic was JS 2-8-2-hauled. Found that we'd left ourselves insufficient time, worth-while-ly to get to JS country; moving on to the then-brand-new Jingpeng Pass line was contemplated, but -- in part, re similar time constraints -- that idea was rejected. We ended up getting just a tiny bit bored with Yebaishou's steam delights; delightful though they were...

It worked out that late in our Chinese stay, we travelled on further eastward, through scores of kilometres of "steam heaven"; but from our personal perspective: the move eastward, just to see a little more of the country -- lingering further, not time-permitted -- to Shenyang (that city itself then, in very "low water" re China Rail steam); after which, essentially back to Beijing and home, pretty much "the way we'd come". Probably not the cleverest way to handle a China bash; but, "for better, for worse"; and we saw a grand and impressive amount of action by class QJ, and some by the other two still-active classes.