![]() ![]() ![]() This complex choreography of chemistry, while seemingly so scientific, is practiced through feeling, intuition, experience. Or is it the science of making steam? Or is an art, rather? To master such a skill, one must have a thorough understanding of the nuances of how coal makes fire, how fire makes steam, how steam makes wheels turn. Now the dinosaurian steam locomotive all but clings to existence by hauling the matter of real dinos out of the depths of the Gobi desert bedrock. Technology that has all but gone extinct after the figurative asteroid known as diesel all but wiped it out in the mid-20th Century. Relative to the microchip age of today, this is ancient technology. The former is much more dramatic, with steep slopes and layered remnants of past mining practices forming a striking setting for each passing steam locomotive under the hazy watch of the formidable TianShan mountains poking over the pit's ledge. There are two distinct parts to Sandaoling, the grade down into the confines of the open pit coal mine and the Erjing underground mine located on the desert flatlands. Approximately once every hour, day and night, a JS class steam locomotive deposits a trainload of fossilized remains of ancient living creatures, rich with carbon and BTUs, to the transloader for shipment to China's national rail network. Sandaoling is a round the clock operation. ![]()
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