Chemins de fer - Chine : livres - histoire

The World's Last Steam Trains: China

The last steam locomotives were withdrawn from China Rail in 2003. After that, some continued to operate heavy freight trains on local railways for a short while, but most were deployed for use on the country's industrial railways, mainly at coal mines and steel works.
This trend continued into the first decade of the 21st century, but subsequently, the number of steam engines in service declined substantially and were confined to just a handful of industrial locations. Steam rail operations in China are now facing extinction.
The modernisation of the railways with the switch from steam to diesel, the closure of unsafe and loss-making collieries and China's drive to reduce pollution and combat climate change from burning coal, have all conspired towards the demise of the industrial lines operating steam in China.

This book looks at the last of the standard-gauge steam operations in China, including Sandaoling, the last steam-worked opencast coal mine in the world; Fuxin, a coal-mining city in Liaoning Province, which until recently, operated the largest surviving fleet of SY locomotives; Baiyin, in Gansu Province, which operated some of the last steam-hauled passenger trains in the world; and Wu Jiu, a remote coal-mining outpost in Inner Mongolia.
Beautifully illustrated with over 120 colour photographs and a description of the operations, this is a striking portrait of the last of the world's operating steam trains.

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Chinese Steam - The Last Years

La Chine était le dernier bastion du chemin de fer à vapeur, la construction de nouvelles locomotives à vapeur à usage industriel se poursuivant jusqu'à la fin de 1999. Même aujourd'hui, quelques locomotives continuent de fonctionner dans les mines de charbon et autres sites industriels, mais cela devrait bientôt cesser, car les révisions de chaudières sont presque impossibles à obtenir à un prix abordable.
Alors que l'ère de la vapeur touchait à sa fin en Chine, les passionnés de vapeur visitaient les sites encore en activité dans une tentative de plus en plus désespérée de documenter ce qui se passait avant qu'il ne soit trop tard.

Bien que souvent perplexes face à l'intérêt manifesté par les passionnés étrangers, les Chinois se montrèrent généralement accueillants et autorisèrent l'accès aux sites industriels et aux voies ferrées à travers le vaste pays. Ces sites s'étendaient des déserts de l'extrême ouest du Xinjiang aux régions industrielles de Mandchourie, avec des incursions en Chine centrale et en région autonome mongole. Les aciéries et les mines de charbon étaient prédominantes, de même que quelques vestiges de lignes à voie étroite.

Ce livre présente les photographies réalisées par un passionné lors de dix voyages en Chine entre 1992 et 2017.

Caractéristiques

Chinas letzte Dampfloks - Unterwegs im Reich der Mitte

Edward Broekhuizen not only hunted the steam locomotives of the East-German Reichsbahn, but was also one of the first steam locomotive enthusiasts to set off for China at the end of the 1980s: when others were still mourning the loss of the East German steam locomotives, the busy Dutchman was already travelling through China with a small English tour group.

This makes him one of the pioneers who experienced the use of steam locomotives at their peak; almost ten thousand locomotives were in service on the approximately 55 000 kilometer long route network. Unique, previously unpublished images provide fascinating insights.

Pages du livre "Chinas letzte Dampfloks - Unterwegs im Reich der Mitte"

Caractéristiques