Mongolia: The desert is alive!
Part 2 of our Mongolian tour began after the end of the excursion the the semaphores near the Russian border with a ride in the night train from Ulaan Bataar towards the Chinese border. At night time we reached the desert region around Saishand, where we stayed in a 0-star railway motel for the next 3 days. A 6-bed room with basic sanitary facilities (toilet) and no showers available... but strategically located close to the most important photo spots of the section! Finally we were allowed to recover from the heat of the desert in the best hotel of the city Saishand with higher comfort and a really good restaurant.
Due to an unusually intensive precipitation period for the season, the desert wasn't brown and grey as it should have been, but almost everywhere covered with green grasses and bushes!
The traffic on the China route was very intensive, at the beginning mainly coal and ore trains were photographed, only on the last two days the container trains also showed up in appreciable numbers. The traction of the heavy freight trains (maximum load 6,000 tons) was taken over by the Russian double locomotives of the series 2TE116UM and 2TE25KM, lighter trains were hauled by a Wumme M62 or a 2ZAGAL unit. The passenger trains ran with M62 (single or double units), or with 2ZAGAL.
Also the locomotive crews had fun:
