Slow trains on highland bring prosperity

Editor's note: In the era of progresses in high-speed trains, a pair of slow trains crawling in the Yunnan and Guizhou mountainous areas have been a major means for the villagers to travel. By helping farmers sell their produces, the trains contributed to local prosperity.

Farmers harvest apples in the Xiaolongdong village, northeast Yunnan's Zhaotong city. (Xinhua/Yang Wenbin)

Slow trains on highland bring sense of happiness

The winter days have seen warm sunshine cast on the platform of northeast Yunnan’s Zhaotongnan train station, facility on the railway that links up the provincial capital Kunming and the neighboring Sichuan’s Neijiang city. On the warm days, villagers in the surrounding areas would shoulder apples to the platform for a train ride, enlivening the tiny station deep in the Wumeng maintains. Via the No.5647 green-covered train, the fresh Zhaotong apples have been sold to the places of Weining, Liupanshui, Anshun and Guiyang in the neighboring Guizhou province.

Apple farmers get on the 5647 train at Zhaotongnan Station, Yunnan province on November 30. (Xinhua/Yang Wenbin)

In May 2002, construction of the Neijiang-Kunming railway finished with the opening of the section that connects Yunnan’s Shuifu with Guizhou’s Meihuashan. One year later, the 5648/5647 pair of green trains were launched between Guizhou’s provincial capital Guiyang and Yunnan’s northeastern city Zhaotong, stopping at all stations on the rail section. With their speed averaging at around 40 kilometers per hour, the trains pass through 18 rural stations, and it takes them 9 hours and 31 minutes to cover the 407-kilometer journey. Crawling on the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau, the slow trains make travelling key to the villagers alongside, and they also allowed agro-specialties to be sold outside the mountains, rendering in locals a sense of happiness.

A farmer sells Zhaotong apple on the 5647 train. (Xinhua/Yang Wenbin) 

To help farmers alongside the railway market their fruits, the train attendants opened special broadcast for local apples, so that “the villagers could sell more in the compartments, and the shoulder load would be lighter at getting off.” Meanwhile, the rail management has added a baggage car at the train rear and put aside a special compartment for the fruit farmers. .

A Zhaotong apple farmer gets off the 5647 train at Caohai Station, Guizhou province. (Xinhua/Yang Wenbin)

Stopping at all stations and offering cheap tickets, the trains served the villagers’ interests a lot. Having run the slow trains for two decades in the era of bullet trains, the conductors can now call out the names of most fruit farmers, who’re also familiar with the train staffers. The trains are thus called “apple trains” or “prosperity trains” by villagers along the line.

Reporting by Yang Wenbin; Trans-editing by Wang Shixue