The Greatest Steam Show on Earth - the People

By and large the people in north China, especially in the towns and cities, are not great smilers, it often seems to me that the more money they have, the less they smile and only a banquet or a mobile phone call will do the trick. In the countryside, they accept their fate and get on with life, just why those stupid foreigners come here and photograph his sheep is beyond this shepherd's imagination:

Jalainur is a welcome exception to the 'no-smiling' rule, the workers are still genuinely welcoming; perhaps because even the unprincipled tour groups have more than enough action on offer and do not need to 'buy their photographs'. Long may it continue:

Considering their lack of job security and the uncertain nature of the future of the pit, the steam locomotives are well looked after, failures seem rare and many are very clean considering the coal and the dust which flies everywhere in the biting wind:

It's a pretty grim environment to work in and the common topic of conversation on the morning workers' trains is the Chinese Communist Party (no prizes for guessing what they think of it):

Dotted all over the system are small huts for the staff who control the myriad points, they provide welcome shelter for the cold visitor:

There are larger control rooms at Dongfanghong (above) and Nanzhan (below):

One of the excavator crews posed between trains:

And who has the worst job of all at Jalainur? It's a close run thing between the flagman on the spoil wagons...

and Mike Ma, seen here telling his somnolent customers just what he thinks of them:

• Introduction to Jalainur

• Coal trains

• Spoil trains

• Tipping the spoil

• Unsung heroes - the steam cranes

• Shed and works