Travel Photographers Network

What Steam Train Photographers Do in China

Text and Photos by Ian Lawrence - All rights reserved.

This is the first of a three part series about steam train photography around the world.

It’s still dark in a remote area in Inner Mongolia. Two small busses drive along a dirt road and approach a manned railway crossing. The buses stop. As the driver sounds his horn to wake up the gatekeeper, people quietly transfer between the two buses. The horn finally has the desired result and the gates are opened. One bus stays where it is. The other crosses the single track railway and continues up the dirt road. The gatekeeper doesn’t waste time watching the bus leave. He has seen it all before.

The sky is getting lighter all the time, and headlights aren’t needed to see that the road is coming to an end. That doesn’t make any difference to the driver as he presses on over the fields in typical Chinese style without reducing speed. He keeps glancing back at our tour leader who indicates where he wants the bus to go. Suddenly the tour leader stands up and points at a steep hill. The driver shifts down a gear, and the noise of the never quiet chinese built diesel engine makes sure nobody will be dosing off for the last part of the ride. The hill gets even steeper, and when even the lowest gear won’t move the bus at any more than walking pace, the tour leader indicates the driver has done all he can. We give him a big round of applause. It’s time to do some walking. Ten western guys pile out of the bus, carrying enough photographic hardware to stock a small camera shop. The tour leader points the way, but in the twilight we can see where we need to be, we just have to get there.

Finally we reach the summit. The view is great, but it will be even greater if a train comes along within the next few minutes. We spread out on the hill, each looking for the spot that will offer the best possible shot. In reality any place on top of that hill would render great images. Videoguys set up their tripods. Camerabags are opened. Lenses are selected. Film and memorycards are checked and rechecked. One guy has a pair of binoculars. “Train coming” he shouts. We all peer into the twilight, some using telephotolenses to see better and further. Yes we can see it. It’s a steamtrain! “Two engines, five wagons” Mr. Binoculars reports. That could be disappointing. The length of the train isn’t important for the type of shot we’re after, but two engines aren’t needed for a train of only five wagons. That means only one engine will be firing. If only the second engine is firing we might as well go back to the hotel, go back to sleep, have a good breakfast, and behave like normal tourists. We want, no we really need the first engine to be firing. “First engine firing!”, Mr. Binoculars puts our minds at rest.

The train is running toward Baomuto station. It might have to wait there for a crossing train, which could take up to 20 minutes. The sun is just appearing above the mountains. We need the train to come now! It seems to creep through the station, threatening to stop all the time, but it doesn’t stop. No crossing! We might really get the shot of the day or even of the tour!

Finally the train is within range of a 200mm lens. The sun is climbing above the hills, it’s too high and will be too bright when the train gets here. A direct backlit shot with sun in the frame won’t be possible. But there are plenty of other options. The colours are great. There is fog over the hills. The engine is making plenty of steam and smoke. The videos are already running. The first 200mm teleshots are made. As the train approaches the position of the sun, more and more film is burned at an increasingly high rate. Shoot, reframe, shoot again. Change camera, change lens, change film. Ever more compositions of shapes, mountain ranges and steam exhaust offer even more opportunities to shoot even more film. The last picture taken before flare prevents further photography will be the best. We shoot it. Then the cameras are silenced for 10 seconds as the train passes in front of the sun. No way of shooting anything useful here. We then take some going away frames, but we know the best picture has already been recorded. The train is now out of view. Thumbs go up all round. Verbal exclamations have to wait until the video guys have finished shooting. As everyone knows they don’t turn their cameras off before even the last hint of recordable sound has long died away.

Done.

We pack away our gear and start walking back to our bus. Not much is said. Is it the lack of sleep, getting up at 5:00 am every morning, or is it that the images we have just experienced need to be digested? We have a great shot, taken in the last weeks of the last regular steamworked mainline anywhere in the world. You might spend weeks trying to get that shot. We had taken the best picture of the day. Only a fantastic sunset might yield anything to match it. Surely we couldn’t be that lucky.

The driver managed to turn his bus on the steep hill without toppling over. It didn’t worry us, we knew he could. Many of us knew the driver from earlier tours. He could take a bus places where no bus had been before and even further. On the Jingpeng pass he had taken us places where other parties had had to walk. Down near the track it's a lot busier than an hour earlier, with sheep and cows on the move. We met up with the second bus. The guys that stayed down below didn’t know what they had missed. They had chosen to take the standard ¾ -sun-in-the-back type shots. Wrong choice! We take up our usual places in the busses. Then we move on in a cloud of dust. Our tour leader had already enquired when the next steamhauled train was expected and knew the best place to catch it. No time to dawdle. We had made the best shot of the day, but it wouldn’t be the last one.


About the Author

Ian Lawrence lives in the Netherlands and works as a civil engineer (piping and pipelining). He spends his spare time photographing trains in their surroundings, always looking for the perfect shot in the best light. As the Netherlands don’t have many locations where he can get the type of shots he likes, he travels abroad whenever he can.

More of his work can be seen on his homepage at www.railway-photography.net

Comments on TPN travel photography articles? Please feel free to send them to editor@travelphotographers.net. We would be pleased to hear from you!

No comments