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| Welcome
back to China! A bit of a rarity in a restaurant near Beijing Bei station |
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| Hi.
Please don't eat me.
After dinner, we boarded the overnight
train for places northward.
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| 31
December. After leaving our overnight sleeper at Chifeng, we
race up to Jingpeng in a minivan and just beat the
westbound into the station |
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| At
Jingpeng, the locos left their wagons in the yard and headed
light to Halokou for turning and servicing |
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| The
locos returning to Jingpeng a few hours later. Yes, it would
seem I've got a proper version of Photoshop to dick around with
now. And it would seem I have a lot to learn... |
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| Puffing
along above Xiakengzi |
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| On
the SiMingYi Viaduct |
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| Leaving
the cutting with the trees by the level crossing before Shangdian |
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| And
again |
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| By
the SanDi crossing, the light was fading |
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| So
we headed a few miles east of Reshui to attempt a night shot
with the big honkers. The Darryl, Aaron and Mike show coming
together nicely to produce this fine effort. The QJs crossed a
light diesel at the previous station to the right but alas had
just shut off steam after getting moving again. Still, not bad
for the last shot of 2007. |
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| 1
January 2008. Early next morning, we thought we'd try the same thing again, but the
train was quite late, being held for crossings until the dawn
light had arrived. Here we see DF4 9518 hitching a ride mid
train - in hindsight this
wouldn't have have been a great shot for the steamers anyway. Our
guide, the ever helpful Mike
Ma, was pressed into service as a Flash
Test Dummy under 8 billion candlepower of flashes for testing
purposes. From here
on in he closed his eyes and faced the other way... |
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| By
the time our target had arrived, the sun was neither here nor
there, but as we'd been freezing our nads off for the previous two
hours it wasn't getting away without a few shots being
taken. Birds scatter upon the QJs approach. |
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| On
the plus side, it's sunny! Apparently this was only day of sun
in the entire week long steam festival. |
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| Approaching
Galadesitai |
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| Not
a bad way to start 2008! Approaching Reshui town. |
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| At
Tunnel 5, we join the assembled group of Police, media, and Chinese and
Japanese railfans, the latter armed to the teeth as always with
the most spectacular camera gear. I felt quite inadequate
with my two cameras. |
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| From
the 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' department, a few grab shots from the van as the train passes Hadashan
station, crossing a pair of diesels on a coal train
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| Another
grab shot on SiMingYi taken from the village |
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| Light
locos heading for Hadashan again |
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| We
had two plans scoped out for the afternoon. If it clouded up, we'd try
one or two clever shots that would take time. If it stayed sunny, we'd do some classic train
chasing, hitting as many spots as possible, hanging our cameras
out the windows of the van and firing them like machine
guns. |
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| And
as
you can see... |
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| ...it
stayed sunny |
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| Our
intrepid minivan driver scored bonus points by slithering almost
all the way up Idiots Hill with some gusto, but the train had stopped at Xiakengzi for a crossing anyway, giving us plenty of
time to stake out a nice spot. |
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| How's
that for lazy? |
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| I
took a few shots by holding my camera out the window and
pointing it in the vague direction of the train. A couple even
turned out ok. . |
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Over
the rooftops - Xiaoyingzi
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| Near
Tunnel 4 |
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| Shangdian
- now 'new and improved' with colour light signals... |
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| Rounding
the curve and into Tunnel 5 |
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| Sunset
on the Reshui bridge. We tried a hasty night shot at the rocky
cutting end of Galadesitai, but it was crap. And Darryl left
his flash reflectors at the morning spot which didn't help.
Dammit. Farewell Jingpeng Pass,
lets hope we meet again! |
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| After
a superb day of running around in bitterly cold wind taking
pictures of steam trains, it would only be appropriate to toast
the new year with a fine champagne dinner (said beverage
carefully lugged up from Beijing) at Mr Li's restaurant in
Jingpeng. Ok technically it wasn't Chinese New Year for
quite a few weeks yet, but I needed to get rid of my
bottles of booze and we all quite keen to drink it... |
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