July 30

  Had my very simple dinner near Lanzhou railway station. I hired a taxi for Lanzhou east bus station but was too late to get on the last one ( around 5 pm?). So I paid a fee of Y160 to the same taxi. It took just one hour via ordinary highway to Baiyin city. Hotel was clean and chip enough (3 stars twin,Y 110).

  Woke up very early at 5:30 next morning. Took only a short distance of 10 minutes by taxi to the CNR Baiyin station. Not too difficult to find out the small BCR platform. Just ten minutes later, I saw the morning passenger train coming in silently from the east. I had no problem at all to have a seat in the YZ coach. People were very friendly even the staffs met later that day. I took both uphill and downhill passenger train (worker’s train). And then cabin ride on the freight pair.

  The scenic of this line is highly recommended. And I was lucky to meet nice blue sky.

  There is a big white board in control room of depot carrying the numbers of all steam locomotives and operators. There are 8 of them and all are SY. But some OOU JS alone with recorded SY could be found in two closed areas near station 2.

  SY  /(operators): 0612(12), 0701(0), 0819(12), 1013(5), 1047(3), 1470(9), 1581(4), 1583(12)

  Stations:

    Name      PinYin       Translation          Note

1 白   銀     Bai Yin      White silver   Since silver mine found some

                                        hundred years ago

2運 輸 部   Yun Shu Bu  Transport department  BCR office

3六 公 里   Liu Gong Li    6 kilometers    A distance from BaiYin

4三 冶 鍊   San Ye Lian    3^rd melt factory   Big factory

5東 長 溝 Dong Chang Gou East long gorge  30’ walking to small iron mine

6深部銅礦 ShenBuTongKuang  Deep part    The only copper ore source now

                           copper mine

Transport;(from Lanzhou)

CNR #5704/5705    0914 Lanzhou→1111 Baiyinshi→1330 Changzheng

5706/5703    1914    “  ← 1707    “  ←1446   “

Freeway Bus; Very frequently , About one hour at Y55

Notes for attached photographs:

H.H.Wu