Shibanxi Holiday 2011 - Day 9 - First Footing

Click here for the main Shibanxi Holiday 2011 page.

Today's weather was a minor improvement in at least it stopped raining by late morning, it was just as well that it wasn't sunny as it never going to be a gricing day. Some time ago, this visit to Shibanxi was set up as a 'farewell to China' whereby a group of old friends would all travel here together with us. As things worked out, they will arrive in dribs and drabs and today the first two arrived on the second passenger train.

No, that's not them but this is one of them with Yuehong as the train prepares to depart.

After a quick lunch we headed up to Huangcun. The small coal mine's business is obviously excellent, they have a number of new skips built by Jiayang's workshop at Shixi.

There was a steady stream of skips out of the mine, each tallied by the clerk:

Some entertainment was provided by a coal train which arrived as we were walking back. By the time I got back to the station, the locomotive had come off the empties, picked up a tourist coach parked in the platform and brought out a mixture of empties and fulls into the loop. The fulls were left there and all the empties and the coach pushed into the head shunt before the train departed again. As always it was very slick, maybe 10 minutes from arrival to departure, but the cool damp conditions revealed the state of the locomotive..