(Loading Station). At BaErZhan there are several loading points including a flood loader, a large electric bucket loader, and a Caterpillar tractor power loader. Three trains can be loaded simultaneously, making BaErZhan a busy place for the railfan. Once the train is loaded, the show begins, as the 2-8-2 slips and gains traction accelerating the heavy 1300-ton coal train up the steep 2 percent grade. The thunder of the struggling 2-8-2’s exhaust echoes off the
pit walls as the train climbs the grade out of the pit. At the entrance to the pit, the signalman lines the train to go to either the washery, where coal is loaded for mainline interchange, or to the local unloading point where coal is sold by the ton and loaded onto trucks. The East Pit mainline is all double track and signaled with centralized traffic control, and trains are very frequent. When the coal mine is in full operation, there can be a train every 15 to 20 minutes out of
the opencast pit, a paradise for steam photographers. Sandaoling Mine Railway utilizes a
fleet of JS 2-8-2s, which are mainline Mikados similar in size and power to a USRA Heavy Mikado. This similarity is not entirely accidental, as the JS is an update of a heavy Alco 2-8-2 that was supplied to the Japanese during that country’s occupation of China. The Chinese engineers pair the running gear of this successful 2-8-2 with a welded boiler of Soviet design. The locomotive was updated with boxpox drivers, a mechanical stoker, and an Elesco-style feedwater heater, making it a modern and efficient mainline machine. This new mainline 2-8-2 was named the JianShe (JS) or Construction class. since this locomotive was to be the motive power behind the construction of many new mainlines across China. At first, the JS 2-8-2s were mainstays on Chinese mainlines, but as train sizes
LEFT: Sandaoling Coal Mine Railway JS 8190 storms upgrade, out of the long straight and into one of the sharpest curves on the mine railway on a cold afternoon in January 2016. BELOW: On a crisp February day in 2016, a grimy SY 1397 storms down the mainline of the Fuxin Mining Railway with a heavy loaded coal train. Soon this train will reach Wulong Yard and the China Railways interchange.
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