Beijing National Railway Museum

By John Heald, April 2010

On planning a trip to Egypt and Jordan we had difficulty in booking airline seats as the world economy slowed up. This led to having a stopover in China, something I had not thought about before. It turned out to be well worth it. We found Beijing and country areas clean and smoke free now that most of the factories have been moved to outlying areas. We did the usual visits to the Great Wall and sites within the city area. The main street of Beijing is 50 km. long and the city perimeter is as large as Belgium!

We travelled around in a private car with guide and driver. On our last daywe discovered in a guide book that Beijing had a very large modern railway museum and we asked our guide to take us there. From the city centre it only takes 30 minutes. Unbeknown to us at the time was the fact that our driver was a retired QJ steam locomotive engineer who was most willing to drive us there.

On arrival we found a beautiful modern building of 16,500 square meters of floor space under a single roof with no pillar supports. It was built in 2002 and houses around 50 steam and diesel locomotives. For those reading this article and have been to the National Rail Museum in York, you would find this at least twice the size. All the exhibits were in good condition with one working QJ parked outside the building. The whole complex only seemed to have one employee that I could see and that was the person selling the entry tickets. It was a pity that few souvenirs were not available, although I did manage to buy a book written by a Chinese local on the last of steam in China.

The preserved QJ 2-10-2 in the museum with me standing alongside

Also on display was one of the 150 engines (Baldwyn) given to the Chinese after the Second World War by the Americans. A favourite engine of mine was a beautiful 2 foot narrow gauge SN 0-10-0 outside framed with tender. It came from a private railway up north. There is also a good collection of English engines. All exhibits have English signs depicting the data on each engine and where it came from.

Ten tracks lead into the museum from the main line , one leading to the high speed train test centre a few hundred metres from the museum itself. One train was on an adjacent siding and I gather these will enter service between Beijing and Shanghai.

So if you fancy a stop over in Beijing, I can well recommend it. Call in and view this museum if you are a rail buff.

The museum also boasts a web site which is easy to locate on Google. Just put in Beijing Rail Museum and you will get a lot of info.

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