Trains, Beijing

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Beijing Railway Station is the main railway station since 1950. It was the busiest railway station in China before the opening of Beijing West Railway Station in 1996. This railway station serve the following destinations include Shenyang, Dalian, Qiandao, Jinan, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Mongolia regions and etc.

I took the pictures on the 6th day of National Holiday, which is almost the end of the holiday period. Thousands of Chinese people were either coming back or leaving Beijing through this Station. There is a metro station " Beijing Railway" in front of the station, it was an long queue of the people to get into the metro station.

Tips: If you face this situation at the metro station, go to the nearby bus-stop, most of the buses will stop in some other metro station nearby.

I was here to check out a train ticket "Taiyuan to Xian (Hard Sleeper)" . I could buy it here, but they were all sold out...

In Chinese: 北京站 (Bei Jing Zhan)

* * * * * Located in the west of Beijing city, this building is considered to be one of the greatest milestones in Beijing building history, largest station in Asia =
==5.8 million square feet, comprised of 8 sections = completed June 6,1997

== I personally have not seen this station, but it is part of the modernisation of Beijing preparing for the 2008 Olympics
== hopefully the HUTONGS of the old inner ciet shall not be ravaged for the sake of " Progress "

there are 4 other Train Stations in Beijing

The West Train Station is HUGE - like everything in Beijing!!!

Ensure you know which station your train is leaving from - in most big cities of China there is a West, East, North and South Station (similar to Paris). If you are going to the West of the country, i.e. Xi'an - you will catch your train at the West Train Station - obviously.

If you have purchased soft sleeper tickets - you are entitled to wait for your train in the '1st class waiting room' we weren't made aware of this in Beijing and it proved very uncomfortable waiting for our train especially with sooooo many locals waiting for trains and eyeing our daughter and being very persistent in taking our photos with their camera phones... it nearly resulted in my husband having a punch up!! It was borderline sleezy.

To save time and money - we opted for the overnight train to Xi'an from Beijing - Z19.

Z19 – leaves Beijing West at 21:18pm and arrives Xi'an 08:19am (1200kms)
– travel time = 11:00 hours

Booking train tickets from Oz was probably the hardest and most stressful thing as train tickets are only sold a few weeks prior to departure and must be delivered or collected at the city of departure - we paid approx $70 per soft sleeper and weren't guaranteed soft sleepers until delivery date.

The cabins have 2 bunk beds - the bottom bunks are slightly more expensive than the top bunks. You have to share a western toilet and squat toilet with the entire carriage - not the place you want to visit 1st thing in the morning - and a washroom for teeth brushing etc.

Some trains have dining carts but with smoking permitted in these it is like a gas chamber when entering. Food is sold onboard but it is traditional Chinese food and with no English spoken you would have no idea what was being served.

I would strongly recommend you take food onboard for dinner and breakfast. The Chinese bakeries have the most delicious buns with sausage and onion baked in it.

There are 4 classes for overnight train travel - soft sleeper - which is what we purchased - 2 double bunks in each room (4 people), air conditioned with lockable door and storage space.

Hard sleeper which is a carriage divided into approx 8 sections with 2 triple bunks - no doors and extremely noisy - how do we know this - on one of our o/n trips we were unsuccessful in securing soft sleepers and had 2xsoft and 1xhard. Adrian drew the short straw and spent the night sleeping with the locals!!!

Soft seat - like an aeroplane seat
Hard seat - not appropriate for us Westerners on such long trips!!

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The sleeper trains in China are quite popular among tourists. After all you don't "waste" daytime travelling, and you save the cost of a hotel room. However, for the last leg of our itinirary we changed our plan an took the day train K616 from Datong to Beijing. It leaves Datong at 8:33 am and arrives at Beijing West station at 14:25 pm. Price for the 6 hour trip RMB 54.

We found this not a wasted day. On the contrary, we enjoyed the views. Especially the last part through the snow-clad Western Hills was spectacular. Here the rail tracks in both directions are far apart, and they pass through several tunnels. Which kept us guessing where the other track would next emerge from a tunnel.

(As the pictures were taken from the train, we could not always avoid reflections on the window.)

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The train going to Yanqing stops in Badaling, where you can easily walk to the Great Wall entrance from.

This train departs from Beijing North station (served by Xizhimen metro station, circular line) every hour between 6am and 8pm and the ride, which I found quite scenic, takes about 50 minutes. From Badaling station you walk about 700m to the entrance of the Wall and the way is clearly marked. Note that the first scheduled return train from Badaling departs at 3:15pm.

As of Oct 2009 the ticket costs 17 RMB one way for a numbered seat. The seats are very comfortable and can be turned around if you feel like sitting with your back towards the direction of the train.

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This was my second long distance train trip and I liked it a lot. I was eager to take a day train for the scenic views and the different social interaction compared to the night train.

We got our seats on the diner car, but we didn't get seated together. When we boarded, someone was sitting in one of our seats so we took 2 seats together, but 3 times someone came to us and said that one of us was sitting on their seat (in Chinese), and 3 times we explained that someone else was sitting on the seat and if we please could sit together. 3 times we got a positive answer. How did they manage to sell the same seat number to 3 different people? Different legs of the journey have different train numbers. Ah well, this is one more thing to experience =)

We bought a soft seater on the D32 train departing at 10:42am from Shanghai Railway Station and arriving at Beijing South Railway Station at about 8pm. The train isn't non-stop, it stops about 8 times along the way to let off or pick up passengers. The ticket cost 327 RMB (as of Oct 2009) for a one-way journey, definitely much cheaper than a flight ticket if we had bought one the day before departure (which is why this tip is classified as budget travel).

One part of the journey I liked was when a group of men, unknown to each other, started playing some sort of checkers/board game (picture #3) and thus killed about 3 hours when some of them had to get off at their station.

I thought that the price of food and drinks was going to be expensive compared to the prices in town, but they were more or less the same for what they served. You can, of course, bring your own food and drinks to cut the costs. We ate a dish with rice, beef, vegetables and one of those funny looking eggs (I didn't eat it) and had beer.

One good piece of news is that the bathrooms (with squat and Western toilets) were very clean and with TP, tissue and soap.

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Beijing has long been the largest railway hub in China. The city has three main stations: Beijing Railway Station, Beijing West Railway Station and Beijing South Railway Station. I used two of these stations:

Beijing Railway Station - opened in the 1950s and is the best located within the city centre. It used to be the busiest station in the city until the West station opened. Generally, trains for Manchuria (including Harbin, Shenyang and Dalian), Shandong (including Qingdao, Jinan), Eastern Seaboard (including Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou) as well as for Inner and Outer Mongolia depart from this station. The remainder depart from Beijing West. Some international lines (notably the railway line linking Beijing to Pyongyang, North Korea (DPRK), amongst others), also depart from this station. It is also located on line 2 of the Metro.

Beijing West Railway Station - opened in 1996, is a huge looking station and, in fact, is the largest in Asia. Trains departing here leave for destinations to the west (including Xi'an, Chongqing and Chengdu, and transcontinental trains for Lhasa and Urumqi) and the Beijing-Guangzhou and Beijing-Kowloon (Hong Kong) routes. Check-out the useful website below for train departure planning and timetables: