Second effort

The morning empty coal wagons to Xinghua Colliery were combined with the empty spoil wagons on this particular morning on the Chengzihe system of the Jixi Coal Railway. The first attempt to surmount the fierce bank out of Zhengyang ended in failure and after rolling back down the hill a spirited effort was made by both locomotives and the train was making steady progress when it passed us stood on the Xinghua spoil banks. The strong side wind must have made the task even harder for the locomotives, it certainly froze my fingers as the temperature was around -15C before taking the wind chill into account.