User:Chinarail/sandbox

User name  : 'Chinarail'

Status     : Wikipedia Contributor & User

Gender     : Male

Languages  : English and some limited Chinese

Residence  : Hong Kong Time Zone : UTC+8

Date Joined : 22 April 2008 First edit : 22 April 2008 First page with new topic created 23 February 2009

Interests
Primary interest : Chinese railway history. Secondary interests : Chinese & S.E. Asian transport history including Shipping, Buses, Tramways, Mining & other Early Modern Industrial Development  and finally… late Qing Dynasty and early post- revolution Chinese industrialists and officials.

About 'Chinarail'
Chinarail was born in the United Kingdom just after the Second World War. After leaving school in 1965, instead of going to university as intended, he ended up in Hong Kong where he has resided ever since. Yes ! ... now getting long in the tooth, long-retired and had the benefit of attending the ‘University of Life; with wildly differing careers : first in Government, then 20 years in aviation and finally three separate and unrelated own businesses. The railway interest derives from family background, being the first in five generations not to work "on the railways" ( Great-great grandfather was driving steam locomotives in northern England in the 1850's.) And to make up for the "hole in life of not working the railways", substituted for this by  building a 7.25 inch-gauge miniature railway with a portable track which in the 1980s provided much enjoyed entertainment at school fairs and carnivals. When not driving this, used to head across the Hong Kong border at weekends and during holidays, travelling around China by railway and ferries. Some knowledge of “street” Cantonese together with its vulgar slang cemented friendships with the drivers of the massive QJ steam locomotives enabling Chinarail to have “hands-on” experience at the controls when their bosses were not watching. Those days are regrettably long gone together with all steam on main lines and all but one or two remote industrial lines. Moving forward to more recent times, ‘Chinarail’ elevated his interest a notch or two into the academic realm and 30 years ago set about some serious research into early Chinese railway history. Now have two books published about Chinese railway history (one is bilingual) and have accumulated a large collection of Chinese railway and transport related books, documents, maps, photographs, ephemera .... you name it. This collection has during the past decade been extensively cited and borrowed from in some thirty or more publications, as well as in exhibitions and permanent displays in Chinese museums.