The Railway Conquest of the World

II. Modern Developments in China and Japan

THE Chinese, once they were awakened to the possibilities of the railway, were not content to permit their country to be covered with foreign-built lines. They decided to become active participators in the movement -- in other words, they acquired all the knowledge they could, and then undertook constructional engineering. Their aptitude for this work finds an excellent expression in the Pekin-Kalgan railway, 125 miles in length. This road was built throughout by Chinese effort, the engineer-in-chief being His Excellency Chang-Tien-Yow, who is today the foremost Chinese engineer in this field in China. He was educated in the United States, where he acquired valuable knowledge concerning this branch of engineering, and completed his training under Mr. Kinder, the builder of the oldest railway in the Celestial Kingdom.

The road is excellently built, and the engineer displayed his ingenuity in coping with the problem of carrying the line through the Nankow Pass. This pass guards the entrance of the main road through the Great Wall, and to overcome the obstruction a gradient of 1 in 30 had to be introduced for a distance of 13 miles. At the foot of the pass three Mallet locomotives of British construction are maintained, and they crawl to the summit of the pass, at an altitude of about 1,500 feet, in two hours -- a speed of about 6¹/₂ miles an hour.

The alignment of the railway up this pass is noteworthy. The road clings for the most part to the side of the mountains, crossing deep rifts and wide clefts, as well as cutting through spurs and humps and compassing massive crags.