Hanoi – Đồng Đăng railway line

Hanoi – Đồng Đăng
Opening ceremony on December 24, 1894
Route length:	168 km
Gauge :	Before: 600 mm today: 1000/1435 mm
Maximum slope :	30  ‰
Legend Hanoi – Ho Chi Minh City railway line Beginning of the three-rail track 0 Hà Nội Long Biên Gia Lâm Yunnan Railway to Haiphong Yên Viên Yunnan Railway to 昆明 北 Kunming North Từ Sơn Lim Bắc Ninh Thị Cầu Sen Hồ Nui-Tiet Bắc Giang Phố Tráng by Hạ Long (standard gauge) Kép after Thái Nguyên Voi Xô Phố Vị Bắc Lệ Sông Hòa Chi Lăng Đồng Mỏ Bắc Thủy Bản Thí Yên Trạch Lạng Sơn Đồng Đăng Nam Quan End of three-rail track Vietnam / China border Ban-Trang Well-Cham

The Hanoi – Đồng Đăng railway is one of the two Vietnamese railway lines with a border crossing into the People's Republic of China . Originally designed as a 600 mm narrow gauge, the railway line was switched to the meter gauge common in Vietnam at the beginning of the 20th century . After the connection to China, a third rail was laid in the standard gauge used there.

prehistory

The railway line was created as a project by the French colonial army in what was then the colony of French Indochina .

The army maintained a large fortress in Lạng Sơn on the Chinese border, but isolated due to poor communication routes . In order to improve their connection, the military wanted a railway connection to Hanoi . The feasibility of such a railway line was examined from 1887 and a 101 km long variant was finally approved on April 24, 1889. Since it was a military railway and the French company Decauville , one of the leading manufacturers of light rail material in the 600 mm gauge, was doing correspondingly successful lobbying work in Paris, the decision was made in favor of a railway in this gauge and Decauville was awarded the contract for the material deliveries .

construction

The construction of the route was technically relatively easy. She followed the valley of the Sông Thương . Larger engineering structures were not required. The construction progress was slow because the quality of the material delivered from France left a lot to be desired. In addition, there were disputes between civil and military administrations, organizational problems on the part of the company commissioned with the construction, raids on construction sites and dissatisfaction of the workers with working conditions, accommodation and hygienic conditions, which left the construction sites en masse.

Alignment of the route

Construction work of Charles Vezin (born January 25, 1840 in Bassou (Yonne) , † 1919) as a subcontractor of the company Soupe and C ^o led, with his compatriot Paul Bert in 1886 Indochina had arrived. He had previously built the 15 km long third section from Cravan to Avallon , the 25 km long second section from Prautoy to Is-sur-Tille and the 30 km long fourth and fifth sections from Auxerre to Gien . He was taken hostage on July 1, 1892 at kilometer 45, between Singanh and Bac-lê, by a gang of around 20 Chinese construction workers armed with Winchester rifles until at least July 22, 1892, in order to extort a ransom. On September 12, 1892, his previous release was reported.

Elaborately built bridge

After his release, there were further kidnappings: On July 28, 1893, Mr. Roty, an employee of the Daniel et Cie company, was found at the Pont des Singes , one of the metal railway bridges, near the village of Song-Hoa , just 800 meters from the Suibiuc militia captured a few kilometers from Bac-lê . He was taken by Chinese hostage-takers to a camp where thirty Annamese prisoners and many women abducted by the hostage-takers were already held. On August 5, 1893, Mr. Bouyer was kidnapped from the railway line under construction and on September 11, 1893, Mr. Piganiol was killed in an attack. On October 11, 1893, Fritz Humbert-Droz was kidnapped.

The route was opened in sections. After five years of construction with numerous deaths and costs of 6 million francs , the last section of the railway to Lạng Sơn was put into operation on December 24, 1894.

On February 10, 1896, the military railway was handed over to the civil administration with the aim of integrating it into a railway system for the colony. This, however, she had to the standard gauge of French Indochina, the meter gauge umgespurt be after the French aristocrat Henri-Philippe Marie d'Orléans had criticized the authorities for gross incompetence in the surveying, construction and choice of rolling stock: The small Decauville locomotives could hardly pull trains of more than three wagons in mountainous terrain with gradients of up to 30 mm / m, and the track material quickly wore out and had to be constantly renewed. The gauge change lasted from 1899 to April 8, 1902. At the same time, the railway line in Hanoi was connected to the existing network there. In 1908 the line was extended in the north to Đồng Đăng , which was done with the expectation that it would continue from there to China. When this connection was not established on the Chinese side, the Compagnie des chemins de fer de l'Indochine (CFI) used the materials already available for the border connection in 1921 to extend the route to Na-Cham by 16 km. It was not until 1939 that the project of a cross-border route seemed to become a reality again. The CFI built a track from Đồng Đăng to the border, to the new Nam-Quan border station . Due to the Sino-Japanese War , however, the line was not built on the Chinese side.

business

5 t two-axle steam locomotive during construction

9.5 t four-axle mallet locomotive with a passenger train with goods transport

The line is now equipped with a three- rail track in meter and standard gauge

The 600 mm railway was initially operated with only three Decauville locomotives. The three locomotives 40, 62 and 80 each weighing 5 tons were demonstrated at the Paris World Exhibition in 1889 before being exported .

No.	Surname	Manufacturer	Wheel alignment	Weight
40	" Amiral Courbet "	Decauville	0-4-0T	5 t
62	"Langson"	Decauville	0-4-0T	5 t
80	"Haiphong"	Decauville	0-4-0T	5 t
83	“ Eugène Etienne ”	Decauville	0-4-4-0 "Mallet"	9.5 t
84	"Phu-Lang-Thuong"	Decauville	0-4-4-0 "Mallet"	9.5 t
85	“ Commandant Rivière ”	Decauville	0-4-4-0 "Mallet"	9.5 t
86	" Carnot "	Decauville	0-4-4-0 "Mallet"	9.5 t
126	“ Commandant de Lagrée ”	Decauville	0-4-4-0 "Mallet"	9.5 t
188	"Kinh Luoc"	Decauville	0-4-4-0 "Mallet"	9.5 t
195	" Francis Garnier "	Decauville	0-4-4-0 "Mallet"	9.5 t

After changing the gauge to meter gauge, due to the light rail material used for this route, which is regarded as a branch line, the vehicle transfer from the Trans-Indochina Railway and the Yunnan Railway was only possible with restrictions.

Before the Second World War , the timetable provided for six to eight pairs of trains a day on the route - some were driven by rail buses. Of these eight pairs of trains, however, only one ran to the end of the line, Na-Cham. Since the connection to China did not come about and the economy was concentrated in the areas around Hanoi and Haiphong , freight traffic on the route was weak. The military remained the biggest customer here.

The route suffered, like the whole country, in three consecutive wars, the Second World War, the Indochina War and the Vietnam War . After the Indochina Conference of July 21, 1954 ended the Indochina War, the Democratic (i.e., Communist ) Republic of Vietnam was established in northern Vietnam . It was allied with the People's Republic of China. This gave the building of a Chinese railway connection to the Hanoi – Đồng Đăng line a high priority on the Chinese side. The gap was closed in 1955. However, the Chinese railway uses standard gauge . This subsequently led to the construction of a three- rail track , which today extends from the border to the Hà Nội – Gia Lam station (Hanoi North).

Twice a week there is a continuous sleeping car connection between Hanoi and Beijing on the route that is driven with standard-gauge vehicles .

literature

• Frédéric Hulot: Les chemins de fer de la France d'outre-mer 1: L'Indochine - Le Yunnan . Saint-Laurent-du-Var 1990. ISBN 2-906984-05-1

Remarks

1. ↑ Hulot also uses the spelling “Nacham”.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Information mainly from Hulot, p. 18.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Hulot, p. 18f.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Charles VEZIN (1840-1919).
4. ↑ Le précédent des frères Roque. Le Journal des débats, July 5, 1892.
5. ↑ La captivité de M. Vézin. Letter of July 8, 1892 in Le Matin , August 16, 1892.
6. ↑ ^{a b c d} Hulot, p. 20.
7. ↑ ^{a b c} Tim Doling: The Phu Lang Thuong-Lang Son railway line, from Autour du Tonkin ( "Around Tonkin") by Henri-Philippe d'Orléans, 1894. June 23, 2016.
8. ↑ Hulot, p. 21.
9. ^ Günter Krause: The train in the rice field. Railways in Vietnam and Cambodia - a travelogue . In: EisenbahnGeschichte 68 (February / March 2015), p. 75.
10. ↑ - Beijing by train - The Man in Seat 61.

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