China

If you want to see stone faced, open-topped running kilns in action then China is the place to be. This bank of large limekilns at Nanpiao show how the commercial kiln sites in places such as Harpur Hill near Buxton must have looked when operating.

The Weizigou coal mine and washery near Nanpiao, Liaoning Province, China.

Disused brickworks at Hongshila in the Nanpiao region of Liaoning Province in China. A quick grab shot from a passing train. I returned to have a closer look four years later and it hadn't changed at all.

The long established coal mining industry in the Beipiao area of China's Liaoning Province and output is now apparently declining. Taiji Mine did not seem to be turning out much coal, but it certainly had a most unusual winding tower.

The headframes at the Zhangxin mine near Jixi are reminiscent of UK practice.

The wheels of SY 0965 which was undergoing a major overhaul in the Baiyin workshops.

Headgear on the second shaft at 2 at Pingdingshan No.2 Colliery. This is quite a small colliery with a rather nice narrow gauge overhead wire electric railway for moving materials and coal on the surface.

Power station and associated opencast coal mine viewed from the plane on a flight from Beijing to Manzhouli. There are so many of these coal-fired stations across China. I read somewhere that they open a new one every week.

An overbearing power plant features in this poster which stands at a road junction in Yuanbaoshan. It is an advertisement for the China Construction Bank and says:- 'We will support the enterprises to develop and provide best service to people'.

The opencast mine at Yuanbaoshan is only a short distance from the power station as the crow flies, but it is a long way by rail due to a significant difference in height. A conveyor system was constructed with castellated towers at the changes of direction for the belt. For some reason this proved unsuccesful initially and the trains continued for several years. The conveyor provides an unusual background here as JS6246 starts a long and heavy coal train away from the opencast loading bunkers.

Dalong Mine is one of the older sites operated by the Tiefa Coal Mining Administration in Liaoning Provice, North-East China.

Xiaonan Mine is one of the collieries operated by the Tiefa Coal Corporation, Liaoning Province, China. This is one of their older units, having been started c1958. It is currently seeing developments in methane drainage to supply gas to a small power station.

Cold and windswept is the colliery at Xinghua on the Chengzihe section of the Jixi coal railway. I was never lucky enough to see a locomotive facing outwards at this location.

There are large numbers of small mines like this around Sanjiazi in the Nanpiao area. This drift is wound from an enginehouse off to the left of the frame whilst the dirt tip haulage is at the summit of the incline at top right.

Eyecatching design on a factory unit at Zhengyang near Jixi. At first the building looked derelict with many broken windows and rusty pipework but apparently it is still in use for some form of engineering process.

Out in the desert to the east of the small town of Linwu the Daba- Guyaozi coal railway passes a brickworks a few kilometres from Guyaozi. On a dark January day it had just begun to snow, a precursor to a severe blizzard that nearly trapped our bus after dark, and QJ 7205 heads downhill with a loaded train heading for Daba and the interchange with China Rail. I understand that China Rail has now taken over the operation of this line.

A grab shot through a train window as we passed the blast furnaces of the Xuanhua Iron and Steel Group Co. Ltd. This was a very busy place with at least six furnaces in blast.

Feeding the Dahuichang limekilns. These large traditional draw kilns were part of the Beijing based Capital Iron & Steel empire.