The International Steam Pages


Shibanxi Holiday 2011 - Day 7 - Shivering in the Drizzle

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If Day 6 was dire, Day 7 was even worse, you couldn't see the hill tops and by early afternoon it was drizzling, later it rained in earnest. We spent the morning tucked up in bed with our laptops, sustained by the Tian Ya's electric blanket. Eventually we dragged ourselves out for a wander round the lower town and then buoyed by the apparent absence of tourists ambled up to Huangcun. Yuehong wanted me to pose by an interesting 'table' but the 'stools' were rather wet:

The small mine was very busy, but they have now put a canopy over the coal storage area to thwart the photographers. The funeral coach looked as if it had been used recently, we watched a tourist couple photographing each other on it, but when Yuehong explained its purpose, they deleted their pictures.... It was obvious that many would be visitors to the mining museum had been put off by all the steps, so something had to be done to make life easier for them. A hotel type lift has replaced the original cages which would not have been passed for tourist use.

Somebody was distinctly unimpressed by the weather...

We walked back along the track as the drizzle took hold, this was (I guess) the third tourist train of the day, it was our first sighting of #9 the only locomotive we had yet to see this trip.

We had finally found the tourists, there were more than two dozen along the lineside trying to photograph the trains with expensive equipment their parents must have bought them. It was just too bad that most of them had their cameras pointed in the wrong direction when the train came...

Not that it really mattered in those conditions. We rushed back to the Tian Ya before the return tender first working. 

our Shibanxi Heaven DVD

our Shibanxi Heaven DVD

Rob and Yuehong Dickinson

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