China Winter tour 2019
China: They are still unloading ...
... the JS hauled trains in the coal mine of Sandaoling. Two unloading points were in operation during our tour, but as you can see, the competition does not idle and is coming to the loading and unloading points with more and more vehicles.
A total of 3 locomotives have been rostered for the services at the open cast mine, plus another 3 JS for servicing Nanzhan, the central marshalling yard, and the trips to Yijing and Erjing.
An almost always sunny and cold winter weather produced many GB of image data - now it's going to be sorted.
The condition of the steam locomotive is poor on almost all machines: there is hardly anything done on the locomotives: rust, dirt, loose parts, or roughly hammered boiler linings. By contrast, the JS still perform very well, there was hardly a train that had major problems on the last few meters out of the "hole". The great steam show with hard working locomotives was again a pleasure to watch and hear!
Another positive news is that now the checked luggage can be sent directly from Europe to Hami, eliminating the annoying check-in of the bags when changing planes at Beijing!
Only on the way back Hami still proves to be a provincial airport, which can only check in to the next (domestic) airport.