Jiayang Coal Railway December 2001

The Jiayang Coal Railway in December 2001.

In December 2001, Rob Dickinson and I visited various Sichuan and Chongqing narrow gauge lines with guides arranged by a contact at Chongqing CITS. Shibanxi as it became known to western enthusiasts had only recently been 'discovered' because it was distant from any standard gauge lines. It was probably 'discovered' when enthusiasts visited narrow gauge steam loco workshops and asked where they had supplied locos to or repaired locos from. Bernd Seiler beat us to it and it was probably his reports and photos that persuaded us we had to visit. On this first visit, we had to stay in the big town nearby - Qianwei - on later visits we had discovered accommodation in both Sanjin and Bagou and were able to explore the line in more detail. However, this first visit was special and it's been downhill since then really with the introduction of tourist trains, the ending of the steam and electric coal trains and the mass influx of local tourists. The railway is now essentially tourist trains only with no local passenger trains. The steam locos are not able to haul the longer, heavier tourist trains without double-heading and the Railway has had a steam-outline diesel loco which it uses for much of the chimney-first uphill sections. The line runs around 19km from Shibanxi (Shixi - depot) via Sanjin (Yuejin - main road access) where the tourist trains start to Mifeng (reversing station), Caiziba, Xianrenjiao, Jiaoba (former mine), Bagou (township) to Huangcunjin (former mines).

Upscaled using Topaz Video Enhance AI from 720 to 1080 although I could have gone to 4K. The results are good (although I probably pushed it too far as it looks a bit artificial in places) and it took over 24 hours to process so whether it's worth the effort is questionable.