A loud train whistle sounded on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, ending the history of no railway on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. But did you know that this plateau train is actually a "mixed-blood". When passing through the road from Golmud to Lhasa, the locomotive of the Chinese electric locomotive must be removed and replaced with a diesel locomotive imported from the United States to drive safely. China's high-speed rail leads the world, why does the locomotive of a train have to be imported from the United States? Can't China make it?

Import reason

The Qinghai-Tibet Railway is a main railway line from Xining, Qinghai to Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region. It consists of two stages. The first section is the 814-kilometer distance from Xining, Qinghai to Golmud, which is a double-track electrified railway. The second stage is from Golmud to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. This section has a total length of 1,142 kilometers and is a single-track non-electric railway. That is what we are talking about today, the section of the road where the US internal combustion engine locomotive needs to be replaced. At the same time, it is also the section with the worst environment and the most difficult construction.

Among them, 85% of the routes are located in the plateau desert above 4,000 meters above sea level. Not only the terrain is steep, but also the high cold and hypoxia. The high cold brought about 550 kilometers of permafrost along the railway. These layers of permafrost are sensitive to changes in temperature, and freeze over in winter and expand. In summer, after the temperature rises and the frozen soil melts into water, the land will also become soft and tready, which is very unfavorable for the burying of electric wires.

Even if we can overcome the difficulties and build a power system under such extreme conditions, the cost must be astronomical. Therefore, it is the best choice to replace the electric head with the internal combustion engine head. And the country with the most mature diesel locomotive technology is the United States, so we can only spend money to import locomotives from the United States and use them on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. Seeing this, many people may ask that China can even build a high-speed rail, can it not build a locomotive?

In the early days, it was imported from the United States because China started late in the technical field of trains. The development of steam trains and diesel locomotives was directly skipped, and electric locomotives were built instead. If a diesel locomotive was independently developed for a line, it would not only have a small application range and not many markets, but would also bring economic burdens. It is better to import ready-made locomotives. It's a good deal.

R&D in China

But this does not mean that we have given up developing our own plateau locomotive. After all, China already has the idea of ​​connecting the mainland with the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau through super projects. These dreams cannot be realized by importing foreign locomotives. So in 2014, CRRC Dalian Locomotive and China Railway started the research and development of plateau diesel locomotives.

According to Dalian News: On July 13, 2022, six plateau HXN3B diesel locomotives independently developed by CRRC Dalian Locomotive have been officially used in the Xining and Golmud sections of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. It is believed that there will be more advanced and reliable domestic plateau locomotives that will drive on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the future.

In addition to these questions, some friends are curious, where did the electric locomotive go after the locomotive was replaced? Actually, the question is very simple. The replaced locomotives are all sent for maintenance, and the staff will inspect and repair them, and then add a little non-slip grit for the next use.