Yabuli Forest Railway

This is a route map of the Yabuli Forest Railway from the period when it was in operation. Because the original map was unclear, I annotated it by cross-checking with present-day place names, but it may still contain errors. After logging restrictions were introduced in 1998, traffic declined, and the forest railway is thought to have been gradually reduced and dismantled during the 2000s. Near Yabuli, the Binsui Railway once split into two routes: one via Yuchi Station, and another via Gaolingzi to Hengdaohezi Station. The Gaolingzi route has since been abolished.

Since the late 1990s, Yabuli has been developed as one of China’s leading ski resorts, and it served as a venue for ski events at the 2009 Winter Universiade. Prior to that, the Weiya Line (Weihe–Yabuli South) opened in 2007, and in 2018 the Harbin–Mudanjiang High-Speed Railway (Ha–Mu HSR) opened, along with Yabuli West Station. During the ski season, the tourist train “Snow Country” (Xueguo / 雪国号) operates on the Weiya Line from Harbin to Yabuli South Station.

The yard at Yabuli, where timber arrived, was very large, and many freight cars were stored there. Passenger services were not operated with coaches hauled by steam locomotives; instead, they used railbuses. The railbus would run with an open wagon coupled behind it, which seemed to be carrying passengers’ luggage. In photos taken by others, the front window showed the service destinations: “Yabuli – Lianghe – Huashan.” However, it was unclear on which sections passenger services actually ran.

All locomotives at Yabuli were steam locomotives. The numbers were painted on the sides of the cab and below the smokebox door at the front, but in some cases they were so faded that they could hardly be read. Most appear to have been C2 class, but there were tenders with both bogies and three-axle trucks. The three-axle tenders were slightly smaller. Among them, locomotive “B★309” had metal plates mounted on both sides of the cab. One theory suggests it was Polish-built, interpreting the letter “B” as referring to Poland—波蘭, romanized in Chinese (pinyin) as “Bōlán”— but without a builder’s plate this cannot be confirmed.

On this trip I could only travel as far as Xingfu, about 7 km from Yabuli. The station had passing facilities, and trains could meet and pass there. A train hauling empty timber bogies departed toward the forested area.