Qingdao – Jinan

Qingdao, full of history and tourism.

Its one of the few places to still have Trolley Buses.

The railway station has been rebuilt in time for the olympics.

The city runs with an extensive network of trolley & ordinary buses.

There are future plans to expand the network to include subways.

Chinese Sites: Qingdao Government

Locally Published Train Timetable. Bus Timetable

Planning images

The history of Qingdao is interesting and varied. It was home to Germans during the 19th century and even house the US western pacific headquarters immediately after WW2.

The line between Qingdao and Jinan is a mix of freight and passenger lines. Since the introduction of the 200km/h CRH line doesn’t exactly have a segregated passenger route all the way but where upgrades have been made the line can be seen gently curving around smaller towns.

Journey time on a CRH train is in the order of 2h 50m, distance is about 400km. About 12 trains a day make the trip, 6 more go on to Beijing.

Jinan station like many chinese stations is quite grand on the inside. The low curve of the roof is interesting, high curves were popular during the steam era, with electric engines roof shape you like.

Jinan is the middle of the Beijing – Shanghai, Jinghu railway. 4 parallel lines for most of the way, it is also being upgraded to 300km/h running.

If you were to believe everything that the Ministry of Railways says everything is on track for 380km/h trains by 2012, the reality is that the CRH system has been built very rapidly, they have a shortage of rollingstock. The running speed will more likely be around 300km/h and given the cities along the way average speed will be lower again.

Jinan to Qingdao (Jiaoji Passenger Line) was intended as a 200-250km/h line, running times put it at 150km/h.

What they have achieved is amazing, their 15 year plan for the network is something the world can look to as a guide to getting the population mobile.

Example: D604 CRH timetable

D604	Qingdao	10:17
D604	Weifang	11:24
D604	Qingzhou	—–
D604	Zibo	12:02
D604	Jinan	13:09

China Exit Strategy

As well as to see China the end goal is to get out again.

With such a big country there are only a handful of crossings. Routes out include…

• 3 to Russia (red)
  • Suifenhe, train 401/402, N23/24
  • Huchun Port, freight railway only
  • Manzhouli, trans-Manchurian branch of the trans-Siberian, K19/20 or K7023/7024?
• 2 to Vietnam (blue)
  • Pingxiang, T5/6, T871/872
  • Hong Ha, Narrow Gauge disused
• 1 to Kazakhstan (yellow)
  • K9795/9796, K9797/9798
    
• 3 to North Korea (black)
  • Dandong, K27/28
  • Jian, Freight
  • Tumen, Freight (mainly coal)
• 1 to Mongolia (black)
  • Erenhot, K3/4, K23/24, K89/90, 4652/4653, 4654/4651

Of course with the booming development they have planned for just a couple more.

• 1 to Laos
• 1 to Burma
• 1 more to Kazakhstan

And some rumours of links to..

• Pakistan
• India
• Tajikistan
• and Taiwan

Future lines

Formatting

A problem. I want to add some metadata to posts, not just tags. Tags with values like price:$100 or time:5h44m. Ok sure I could use a database but that is overdoing it for my needs and kinds steers the data towards a rigid structure. Rigid is not what I had in mind I want the nice loose thought style like a mind map.
Alterately I could use psedo data like a $100 tag and 1h tag. Round the numbers out.
Another idea is a formatted table possibly linked to a google doc? Again the value of the data doesn’t warrant the use of that kind of structure

JRTR

I came across the Japanese Railway & Transport Review (JRTR) while looking for planned extension to the KTX network. Fantastic professional information on East Asian railways, particularly High Speed networks.
Some of the articles delve into the aesthetic and ultimately anthropological difference between Japanese railways and the rest of the world.

Busan to Seoul

Korea is pretty small.

KTX make the cross country journey in 3 hrs and dep. roughly ever 20 mins.

Regular trains take around 4 hours, only 12 trains make the full journey between the cities.

KTX fare 47900 KRW standard class

Mugunghwa trains (slow) cost 26500 KRW

Saemaul 39300 KRW

The high speed KTX line is being expanded from Busan to Gyeongsan over the next couple of years.

The existing line is in now way run down, most of the tunnels are less than 20 years old. You can see the difference that the highspeed line takes north of Gyeongsan, it runs almost straight through massive hill sides, while the standard line runs around through the valleys.The KTX line only intersects the slower lines at a couple of major towns, not joining the suburban lines until 15km from Seoul’s main station.

Both routes are double lines.

Korail

KTX obviously dominate the railways of Korea. 3 other class of train still run on non-KTX lines.

Saemaul are long distance express passenger trains, usually DHC (fast DMU’s.

Mugunghwaare are long distance trains, they stop more frequently. They also are distinguished by a red colour.

Korean wikipedia is a good starting point.

Some fan sites do exist, although a little hard to come by and tend to be written in Korean, naturally or sometime Japanese.

One intersting article…

• Korail still operate a Staff and Ticket system at Osu. The manual kind, not the electric.

The Koreans have a flair for colour only rivalled by the japanese.

Korail run a number of tourist trains. http://www.ktx21.com/

• The Sea Train is a bright blue. http://www.seatrain.co.kr/
• Features seating facing the sea
• Doesnt run when there is a storm

Korail also runs a luxury cruise train, the Haerang. A deep blue/purple.

The LadyBug is red with black dots.

Other nice photos can be found here and there

Recent history of Korail is interesting. From the end of the war until the late 80’s, rail travel in Korea, outside Seoul was secondary to air and road transport, a slower mode of travel. A concious shift was proposed in the early 90’s to stop the rapid rise of car and air congestion with the introduction of the KTX. It wasnt an immediate sucess, partly due to economic slumps and an over-estimate of initial traffic (200,000 pax/day). As of 2007 KTX has reached around 170,000 pax/day, extensions are still planned & under construction. (see JRTR for more info)

Iphone blogging

Surprisingly easy. Although typing is a little akward. I think the way you use an iPhone lends itself to the media of blogging much better than an upright computer.
The typing gives you more pause for thought, time to get the grammer better like.
The wordpress app makes it easy to create new entries. The web method offers you too much, too soon.

Wow and adding photos is a snap. Yep this is one of those once in a decade computer tools that will leave their mark for another decade.

Sakhalin – Wakkani

Russia to Japan.

The Heartland Ferry a day covers the 170km journey in 5h30min.

Departure dates vary considerably between winter and summer. Approximately 2-3 times a week during summer.

Dep Korsakov 1200 (Russia Time)

Arrival in Wakkani 1730 (Japan Time is -2h ie 1530)

Train station is quite near the ferry terminal

Sakhalin Oblast

The main center is Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. There are regular buses or a train service.

Train 695 | Kholmsk – Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk | 0445 – 1106

An annoying time to depart but good for making the most of your day. The line offers some amazing views running north along the coast then winding through the hills to run south again. There is a southern route that seems to run directly across the mountians taking around 100k, it seems this route is not in use, at least by passenger trains. Its a shame as the countryside is quite spectacular.

Sakhalin is an oil rich island, but without so much of that annoying envionmental legislation to get in the way of the oil companies.

This is not a place you can visit in winter, only between March and October. Outside that the tempurature can get as chilly as -40deg C

Tunnel to the mainland

During 1950 a plan was hatched by Stalin to connect Sakhalin to Russia. Lines up and down Sakhalin were already in place. This hastened the building of the main line from Poronyansk, half way up the island to, Pobedino then to Nogliki . A line from Pobedino to Pogbini would carry the mainland connection.

Studies were carried out to make the crossing at the narrowest point of the straight Pogbini, a crossing of only 9km.

Sadly this railway was build using gular labour. Some 12000-9000 prisoners worked on the line. Almost the entire land was constructed by hand, very little machinery was used.

Stalin died in 1953, after 3 years of work, 22 days after his death, the amnesty of prisoner began and the camps dissolved.

The work was carried out simultaneously across the route. A mystery surround how much of the tunnel was actually built, some say only plans were made, other say that it lies under the straight, flooded under the waves.

After 1950’s more work was done to slowly complete the line as far north as Noglik.

On the mainland a line runs north from Komsomolsk along the Amur river. Only a road runs as far as the little seaside town of Lazarev.

It is hard to imagine they continued building for 3 years summer and winter.

Since the Trans Asia Railway has been promoted in the 90’s the Russians are again looking at a Japan – Moscow – Europe railway. Only 9km to bridge to Russia and 50km to Japan, by modern tunneling or even bridging standards this is a short hop. The other remaining barrier, gauge conversion, Sakhalin went with 1067mm, after the Japanese established the 1st lines and locomotives.

Tunneling Article pdf

Oil

This century has see Sakhalin run by the Russian and Japanese. WW2 it was a war zone. Before and after this it was more know for its prisons than for its mining and fishing industry.

Only the last 50 years has seen the oil & gas reserves here exploited. They are said to be the world largest. Conditions for workers and development seem to relect a (forgive the americanism) Wild west scene.

Shell was the biggest driller in the area until the Russians began their own companies pushing the dutch multinational to one side.

Greenpeace and other environmental groups are getting more and more interested in this place, as untouched by humans as it is, only 11% is nature reserves. And the laws of protection are not nearly as strict as European or North American nations.

Coming from a area that has some minig towns, sure there is lots of money. But at the end of the day you dont get alot of hospitals, schools, libraries, parks, clean air things that you can value your whole life. You generally get alot of bars, hotels, and eventually police, fire and ambulances.

Vanino – Kholmsk

Rumors of a ferry service. Other than air this is the only access russia has to the Sakhalin Oblast. There are 2 trips a day. Trip takes around 10 hrs. The ferries take passengers trucks and railway wagons. The ferries leave when they are full.