R


EAL STEAM IN 2016? Most Americans would insist that this surely cannot be possible. After all, over half a


century has passed since the last steam locomotive ran in daily revenue service on an American Class I railroad. Yet, across the Pacific Ocean, real American- style steam runs daily in China. While the last QJ 2-10-2s have gone the way of the dinosaurs, two classes of standard gauge 2-8-2 Mikados remain on a few industrial railroads. These locomotives run the way steam locomotives were intended to work, pushed to their very limits and cared for by dedicated crews of railroaders. However, 2016 may be the last year for these giants of the industrial age, since the lagging Chinese economy threatens the industries that employ these magnificent machines. I have been traveling to China for


my entire adult life, with dozens of railfan trips since 2008 alongside three years living, studying, and working in China. The nation has undergone tremendous change in the past decade, and the railroads have changed with the country. High-speed trains crisscross the countryside linking modern cities, while dieselization has swept through the local and industrial railroads of the


nation. In 2008, there were well over a thousand steam locomotives at work in the country, but now there are a mere two dozen. Along with the death of the 2-10-2s, steam has vanished on the local narrow gauge railways, since these lines have been abandoned in favor of trucks and paved highways. A few lines remain, however, offering the last real steam show in the world.


There are two main steam centers remaining in China, Sandaoling Coal Mine


Railway and Fuxin Mining


Administration. Each of these railways maintains at least eight locomotives under steam and running daily all year long. In addition to these two systems, there are a few other railways that continue to utilize steam locomotives. Pingzhuang Mining Railway maintains a small fleet of 2-8-2s while several factories maintain one or two locomotives for limited switching.


This article


will focus on these three remaining railways, since they are the site of the most exciting steam action and provide excellent railway photography locations.


Sandaoling Coal Mine Railway


At first glance, the town of Sandaoling looks like a mix of a Chinese western


movie set and a gritty Appalachian company town. However, this city in far west China is the site of the world’s last great steam show, a double-track railroad with mainline 2-8-2s hauling coal up a 2 percent grade. The rich coal deposits at Sandaoling were first exploited in 1958, and the first mines grew into a system with both deep underground mines and a massive opencast pit mine. Today, both the opencast pit and the deep mines are served by steam locomotive-hauled coal trains. The railway system at Sandaoling has


two parts, the Opencast Division and the Deep Mines and Transport Division, each with their own fleet of steam locomotives. The Opencast


Division’s


locomotives serve in the opencast pit, bringing coal out of the pit to be sold and transferred to trucks, or to be loaded into China National Railway (CNR) hoppers for shipment around the country. The Deep Mines and Transport Division locomotives serve the three-mile branch to the two deep mines, Erjing (Mine 1) and Yijing (Mine 2).


This branch is a steep uphill grade for empty trains, producing some incredible steam action as these trains struggle to lift dozens of empty hoppers out of the


On a frigid late afternoon in January 2016, JS 8167 silhouettes against the setting sun as the locomotive shoves an empty train away from the washery facility at Sandaoling in western China. Despite the sub-zero temperatures, the locomotive engineer has left the cab windows open, showing his own silhouette against the sun. This locomotive is a JS class 2-8-2 built in 1987 and has spent much of its life working in the massive opencast pit coal mine.


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