CHENGDU: Newly-weds Wang Jianhua and her husband Wang Hengkun felt that the happiest moment in their wedding was the ride on the steam locomotive in their home town, Jianwei County, in Southwest China's Sichuan Province.

They participated in a joint wedding together with eight other couples last Friday.

The ceremony started at 9:30 am at the county's biggest open square. Jianwei County is about 140 kilometres south of Chengdu, the provincial capital.

After they exchanged rings and made their vows, each couple also adopted a banyan tree along the county's main road, as a witness and symbol of their marriage.

Then they went to the county's train station. Amidst the sound of drums and firecrackers, they boarded the steam train, one of the few passenger trains still pulled by a steam locomotive in China today.

The young Wangs' have a special attachment to this steam-powered train.

"Both of us grew up riding the train," said Wang Hengkun, the bridegroom who is an employee with the Jiayang Group, the local industrial company that owns the rail line.

Wang Hengkun once worked as a repairman on the small railroad.

Wang Jianhua, the bride, said her grandfather had also worked for the maintenance department of the steam-powered rail line.

But the train in Jianwei County is different from regular steam-powered trains. It is much smaller and runs on narrow gauge tracks almost half the width of standard-guage rail lines. The distance between the two rails of a standard-guage rail line is 144 centimetres, but on this narrow-gauge line the distance is only 76.2 centimetres.

The railway was built in 1958 to transport coal.

The history of local coal mining goes back to the early 20th century, when it was started by the French and the British. Before the construction of the railway, the coal was hauled out by horse through Bajiao (banana) Gully and loaded onto junks on the Minjiang River at the port town of Shixi.

During the late 1950s, China was pushing the production of iron and steel. As a result, Jiayang company was established and the narrow gauge railway opened.

During its heyday, the line transported some 700,000 tons of coal a year through Bajiao Gully to the port of Shixi.

The rolling stock and locomotive were produced in 1958 by the Steam Engine Locomotive Plant in Shijiazhuang, the present-day capital of North China's Hebei Province.

The local railway, only 19.84 kilometres in length, zigzags through the hilly county with only eight stops.

Lu Wanjin, 68, still remembers the day when the steam locomotive started operation in the county.

It was July 12, 1959. "It took three days and nights before we completed the first 19.84-kilometre run," Lu said.

And the engine pulled only eight freight wagons.

Lu and his colleagues and managers worked hard to familiarize themselves with the operation of the rail line.

Gradually, the speed of the tiny train was increased from 5 kilometres per hour to 20 kilometres per hour and it could haul as many as 40 coal, freight wagons or- passenger carriages.

A lot of local people have fond memories of the steam train, as it carried their first girl friend, or their family's first colour television set and refrigerator from the outside world into the gully.

Even with the sharp drop in coal production, the locomotive is still the main means of transportation for the tens of thousands of local farmers and coal miners carrying them to the outside world.

Today, it makes four runs a day, pulling eight passenger wagons, each with 20 seats. The one way trip costs 1.00 yuan (12 US cents) for company staff and 2.50-3.00 yuan (30 to 36 US cents) for others. The one way trip takes about two and a half hours. It no longer hauls coal regularly.

Problem of survival

According to Lu Qing, the steam locomotive's chief mechanic, only two of the original 10 steam engines are in service today.

Except for their fireboxes, the rest of the locomotives and the line's rolling stock has undergone countless "surgeries," the chief mechanic said.

Over the years, the local mechanics have devised numerous ways to maintain and repair the tiny steam train so that it has continued to run until this day.

As coal reserves in the area are running out, the Jiayang company is shifting its businesses to fields other than coal mining and trying to cut down operating costs.

A decision has to be made as to whether to keep the line operating, as operating costs run to 1.5 million yuan (US$181,000) a year.

There has been talk within the company of closing down the tiny steam train. The railroad could be turned into a motor highway and the trains sold as scrap.

However, other people have called for the preservation of the line, as they see it as a symbol of China's "Industrial Revolution" that could serve as a tourist attraction.

In fact, the narrow gauge line is known to steam locomotive fans around the world.

By typing the words, "narrow gauge" and "Jiayang" in the search window in Google, people can even see a recent photo essay covering a ride on the steam train from the town of Shixi (or Shibanxi) to the town of Bajiao.

The photos show a small coal mining town, its people and their lives. There are shots of local farmers herding their pigs, as one carriage is set aside for passengers with animals and sacks of goods. One shows the train pulling five freight wagons of bricks and stone.

Rob Dickinson, a steam locomotive fan from Britain, has visited what he calls the Shixi (Shibanxi)-Jiayang Coal Mine line twice. Writing for the International Steam Page listed on a few Internet portals, he says he can only "hope the line lasts long enough for me to find the time to get back."

It is on the tour map for steam locomotive fans worldwide.

However, Dickinson also adds a caution about group tours.

"Please think twice (or more) before coming to Shibanxi with a group tour to charter a 'toy' train," he writes. "This is 'the real China' and the longer it stays that way the better.

"The people are, economically, disgustingly poor, but culturally rich..."

(China Daily 06/01/2004 page14)