We rode the train from Beijing to Qingdao. That’s a distance of about 490 miles (790 Km). On the high speed train it takes 5 hours and 45 minutes.
The first time I took this trip on a train it was an overnight sleeper that took over 12 hours.
The train is moderately high speed. Top speed I saw was 244 KPH, which is 152 MPH. We maintained this speed for the first couple hours, but then the speed was reduced as track conditions changed. The slowest sustained speed I saw was 164 KPH, or 100 MPH. The slower we went, the rougher the ride because of poorer track. At full speed the ride was very smooth. It was never a bad ride.
The Beijing South Railway Station is fairly new, and looks like an airport. It’s only for high speed trains. There are 24 tracks. A train leaves each track about every 15 minutes.
Leaving Beijing we passed a lot of factories…
and freeways.
Once clear of the city, we passed cities, villages, and farms. Never in the 490 miles did we see undeveloped land.
There’s lots of agriculture, but all that we saw was pretty small scale. Farms reaching to the horizon, but not fields reaching to the horizon. Most of the crops appeared to be vegetables, so huge fields are probably not appropriate. And the labor input is pretty high, as illustrated by this guy hand-watering.
Several areas were covered with greenhouses. These greenhouses don’t just stretch as far as you can see in the snapshot. They really do reach the horizon. I have no ideas how many acres are covered with these low greenhouses.
We saw many, many apartments under construction.
Never built one at a time, I’ve seen up to 35 buildings going up in a complex.
If you look between the buildings under construction in the photo below, you will see something that appears at any construction site-- worker housing. Its always blue and white, and always constructed out of sheet metal.
We think this is a fish farm. Couldn’t read the sign.
We saw plenty of older-style homes too. I say older-style because these appear to be brand new.
There is lots of industry. From small factories to large industrial complexes.
We saw coal trains…
coal yards…
and coal-burning power plants.
And many views of everyday life.
It was a very interesting trip, and a great way to see everyday life in China.
2 comments:
According to an article in today's WSJ, those high-speed trains in China will be slowing down soon. Interesting tidbits from the article:
Running trains at 350 km/h requires twice the energy of running at 200 km/h
At 350 km/h, 90% of the energy goes to overcoming wind resistance (vs. 70% at 200 km/h)
At 350 km/h, wheels slip so much that you need bigger motors and significantly more electricity to operate and there so much wear on the tracks that costs for daily inspections, maintenance and repairs go up sharply--which is why in Europe, Japan and Korea no operators run trains above 320 kilometers an hour
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