Coming from the Depths of the Tracks: Yunnan Railway Museum

China is so vast, I want to see it. I'll take you to a place you may or may not have been before.

Coming from the Depths of the Tracks: Yunnan Railway Museum

Yunnan is located in the southwestern border of the motherland, with towering mountains and treacherous rivers. For thousands of years, the Yunnan Plateau has maintained a mode of transportation and trade characterized by "bells ringing on mountain trails as horse caravans pass." In the spring of 1910, Yunnan saw the birth of its first railway. Over the past century, it has written a unique history of "three tracks running in parallel": meter-gauge, narrow-gauge, and standard-gauge railways.

The Yunnan Railway Museum is a specialized thematic museum focused on the history of railway construction and development in Yunnan. It is one of the three major railway museums in mainland China.

Kunming North Station, a yellow French-style building, serves as the starting point of the Yunnan section of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway (now the Kunming-Hekou Railway). This is the South Hall of the Yunnan Railway Museum.

After the end of the Sino-French War in 1885, while occupying Vietnam and managing its Indochina colony, the French also cast covetous eyes on China. In 1897, France forced the Qing government to "agree in principle to allow, from the border with Vietnam, via the Baise River area or the upper Red River area, a candidate railway to reach the provincial capital, to be gradually surveyed and constructed by China." In 1903, the Qing government and France formally signed the "Sino-French Convention on the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway," recognizing France's concession to build and operate railways in Yunnan, China.

In 1910, the meter-gauge Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, stretching from Haiphong Port in Vietnam directly to Kunming, Yunnan, was fully opened to traffic. "The train runs not within the country but to foreign lands." This railway was built with French capital and technology, as well as the blood and lives of Chinese laborers. It facilitated the transformation of the ancient Yunnan region from a traditional agricultural civilization to a modern industrial one.

Looking outward through the door of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway built by the French, the people of Yunnan saw the surging waves of the world era, felt the immense power of science and technology, and at the same time, their awareness of fighting for their own railway rights, building their own railways, developing the national economy, and resisting foreign capital plunder began to awaken. Based on local conditions, learning from the West, issuing stocks and bonds, and adhering to the principle that "non-nationals may not hold them," they struggled for 21 years from 1915 to 1936 to raise funds and build the 177-kilometer "Gejiu-Bisezhai-Shiping Narrow-Gauge Small Railway" (Gejiu-Bisezhai-Shiping). The narrow gauge was only 600 mm, less than half of the standard gauge (1435 mm).

(A 10-ton narrow-gauge wooden flat car, a national first-class cultural relic)

The North Hall of the museum is a modern building. The South and North Halls are connected by an aerial walkway. The museum houses a precious collection of locomotives from Japan, the United States, France, Germany, and other domestic and foreign manufacturers, some of which are national first-class cultural relics.

Standard-gauge "Shangyou" type steam locomotive, made in Tangshan in 1971.

Meter-gauge "Dongfanghong 21" diesel locomotive, made in Qingdao in 1978.

Standard-gauge "Dongfeng 1" and "Dongfeng 2" diesel locomotives are products from the 1960s and 1970s, serving China's railways for over 40 years.

A German-made tourist coach gifted to China by the Myanmar Railway as a diplomatic present.

"Chuncheng" EMU was specially developed for the 1999 Kunming International Horticultural Exposition. It operated as a tourist train between Kunming and Shilin. The Chuncheng EMU was a pioneer in China's early exploration and manufacturing of high-speed EMUs.

A meter-gauge steam locomotive made by Kawasaki Shipyard in Japan in 1897, in service on Yunnan railways from 1958 to 1985.

A meter-gauge wooden passenger car produced in France in 1940, carrying 52 passengers, retired in 1985.

An SN-type narrow-gauge steam locomotive produced by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia, USA, in 1923, used on the Gejiu-Bisezhai-Shiping Railway, retired in 1991.

The Michelin meter-gauge diesel multiple unit passenger car can be described as the museum's "treasure of the museum." It was a business car operating on the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway at the time, with a particularly noticeable white paint scheme.

Manufactured in France, it was put into use on the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway in 1914 and was then the world's most advanced internal combustion multiple unit. In 1932, the French Michelin company fitted each wheel tread with Michelin rubber tires that could be inflated automatically or manually, hence the name Michelin railcar.

The rubber tires provided good shock absorption and low noise during operation. The interior was equipped with soft seats and hard seats, as well as a washroom, toilet, kitchen and dining area. It was luxuriously decorated, like a fully functional mobile hotel, offering a comfortable ride. It was not open to ordinary people and only carried French technical personnel and high-ranking Chinese and French officials.

As early as 1914, the Michelin railcar had reached a speed of 100 km/h, while the steam locomotives on the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway at the time could only run at 15–20 km/h, leading to the saying "the train is not as fast as a car."

In 1984, the Michelin railcar was scrapped due to a lack of spare parts. Currently, only two sets of "Michelin" diesel railcars exist in the world, with the other set in France.