Family route: Witnessing China's train transformation
- By Zhang Jiaqi
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E-mail China.org.cn, September 20, 2019
Lyu Shunping quite enjoyed delivering meals to his father, because he might also get to play on a locomotive. However, he would get scolded for hanging around too long. "This place is not your playground," Lyu Maolin often told him.
Lyu Shunping said those moments made him decide to become a locomotive driver, which would let him play on one to his heart's content. So after serving in the army, he signed up for the test for a locomotive driving license in 1986.
At that time, Zhengzhou was beginning to replace steam locomotives for passenger trains with diesel ones. When Lyu Shunping got his license in 1987, he began driving one of the first diesel locomotives of the then Zhengzhou Railway Bureau.
Lyu considered himself lucky, as the diesel engines were much cleaner than steam ones his father drove all his life. The new diesel locomotives also allowed a higher maximum speed, capable of running at 120 kilometers per hour.
And the development of Zhengzhou's train industry has really taken off since then.
In 1997 – merely a decade later – Lyu Shunping began to operate electric locomotives, which were even faster and cleaner than diesel ones. He said he no longer had to put up with the smell of diesel oil.
That same year, China conducted the first large-scale acceleration of its regular-speed trains, with a second round of speeding up a year after. Zhengzhou Locomotive Depot then set up its first team of fast-train drivers in 1998, and Lyu Shunping was one of them.
Lyu said he is proud of Zhengzhou Locomotive Depot for being the testing ground for speed increases of China's regular-speed trains, with its drivers continuously setting records on existing railway tracks at the time. Still, those records do not compare to those of the high-speed trains today.
"China's railways have been developing very fast over the decades, but in my eyes, the recent 10 years is a decade when China's railways develop faster than ever," Lyu said.
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