Chinese Railways - Footplate Ride On Sandaoling's JS8194 To The Coal Pit For a Load of Spoil &Return 

These guys are truly amazing to work. All the crews work in three's and all are highly experienced drivers. They rotate driving, firing and resting. It is a real shame their art is coming to an end.

That's true. Very soon after rail ops finished a few made it out (by rail) to the national network and were taken to Urumqi for display. Commercial steam is still unclear if very limited operations are still going (by which I mean a single locomotive that spends 99% of its time in steam on standby), but for the most part - yes, all gone. There are a few tourist ops going - Shibanxi is the most famous, also a large tourist operation near Zhengzhou with a large fleet of 762mm gauge locos 'in stock' but only a couple in service. A few other minor ones still going as well, I believe only one is standard gauge and uses a SY 2-8-2. For some commerical steam however, Indonesia is making a bit of a come back with some sugar mills and even one back in operation in the Philippines which I hope to visit next year. If you're interested in my Indonesia findings, you can check, my latest trip report : www.chinesemodeltrains.com/trip15

They are to activate the airhorns. The JS (and all standard Chinese steam locomotives) are equpiied with steam whistle and airhorns.

Not from me. I was there last in oct 2018. I would imagine there will be lots online soon with the amount of people visiting this season.

I'll check, but I am quite sure they were never equipped as they were designed for heavy industry. There were areas particularly in the Tonghua region in north east China where they operated on the mainline, however this was an exception to the rule. Many of the larger QJ's were stoker equipped but the freezing conditions in winter often saw them siezing up and most were stripped out before too long; much cheaper to employ a second fireman!

You are correct. All a part of history now. I believe it all came to an end in August/September 2022. Tracks have been lifted very soon after cessation of rail ops.

@@petesworldrailwayvideos I just found out that they are still running at Sandaoling as of today, but it really seems like this might be the last year if not months of their operation.

@@winroo1274 Hi Winroo - correct, sort of. The open cast pit ceased steam operations sometime ago, but there are three still in operation which serve the deep mines which are a separate entity to the Sandaoling coal railway (it seems they shared maintenance facilities however). As you say their future is on very thin ice.

@@petesworldrailwayvideos Thank you for the clarification. After further research, I managed to found out the following information: Tracks near the open pit was fully dismantled in Aug 5 2022. They were occasionally double heading 2 JS from XinMeiCang (New Coal Storage) to NanZhan (South Station) on highly irregular schedules until very recently (possibly fully replaced by diesel engines but this is unconfirmed ). Only the western Route from NanZhan (South Station) to ErKuang (Second Mine) are running steam locos now. What the locals call Second Mine is probably the Deep Mines you mentioned and it’s only running twice a day now. There are 5 engines currently in operation, but only 3 are in regular service and two on standbys. It really seams like that they might not survive this year.

@@winroo1274 The three currently running are 8077, 8314, 8366. I''m not sure of the other numbers, but there's no shortage of parts with a heap of them in the storage compound (although a number have recently been sent off for display in Urumqi)