User:Dragfyre/Sandbox/Yunnan-Vietnam Railway

The Yunnan–Vietnam Railway or Sino-Vietnamese Railway was a 855 km metre gauge railway built by France between 1898 and 1910, connecting the Vietnamese city of Haiphong with the Chinese city of Kunming, via the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi. The 466 km-long section within China from Kunming to Hekou is known as the Kunming–Hekou Railway. The 389 km-long section within Vietnam can be subdivided further into two legs: the 296 km-long Hanoi–Lao Cai Railway, and the 102 km-long Hanoi–Haiphong Railway (both legs share a common set of tracks near Hanoi). Building the railway was an extremely difficult undertaking, mainly due to poor working conditions, the hazardous mountainous terrain of Yunnan, and the ubiquity of malaria in the region. Upwards of 12,000 labourers were said to have lost their lives during its construction.

The route used metre gauge tracks throughout, like most of the other railways built in Indochina. Currently, the Kunming–Hekou section is the only main line in China using metre gauge. This section features many structures notable for their advanced design developed to respond to the difficulties of the terrain, such as the pont en dentelles ("lace bridge") and the pont sur arbalétriers ("bridge on rafters", known as the Faux-Namti or Wujiazhai bridge).

Overview
The Yunnan–Vietnam Railway was a 855 km metre gauge railway built by France between 1898 and 1910, connecting the cities of Haiphong, Hanoi and Kunming. The railway can be subdivided into three sections: the 466 km-long Kunming–Hekou Railway, the 296 km-long Hanoi–Lao Cai Railway, and the 102 km-long Hanoi–Haiphong Railway. The Lao Cai and Haiphong lines diverge at Gia Lam Railway Station, using a common set of tracks near Hanoi. Beginning at Hanoi, it runs along the course of the Red River and its tributaries, veering into the Nanxi River valley at Hekou, then crossing over mountains to follow the Nanpan River to Yiling, where it turns west to reach Kunming.

The entire route uses gauge tracks, like most of the other railways built in Indochina. Currently, the Kunming–Hekou section is the only main line in China using metre gauge. This section features many structures notable for their advanced design developed to respond to the difficulties of the terrain, such as the pont en dentelles ("lace bridge") and the Wujiazhai bridge, called the pont sur arbalétriers ("bridge on rafters", known by the French as the Faux-Namti bridge).

Sections
The Hanoi–Haiphong section runs from the city of Haiphong on the coast of the Bay of Tonkin, through the lower Red River Delta to reach the Red River near Hanoi. There are 18 railway stations on this section of the line. Travel from Haiphong to Hanoi takes around 2.5 hours. The Hanoi–Lao Cai section runs along the Red River from Hanoi to the city of Lao Cai, on the Vietnam–China border. There are 40 railway stations on this section of the line. Travel from Haiphong to Lao Cai takes around 10 hours. The Kunming–Hekou section rises from an altitude of 76 m at Hekou to 1900 m at Kunming, crossing through the (???) mountains of eastern Yunnan. There are 34 railway stations on this section of the line.
 * Hanoi–Haiphong
 * Hanoi–Lao Cai
 * Kunming–Hekou

Next morning the train carried us swiftly away from the Red River through a short tunnel to the Nanxi, which the railway, completed in 1910, follows almost to its source. It penetrates 465km into China to the provincial capital Kunming (formerly Yunnanfu) and. is a major engineering feat Driven through very difficult terrain, it cost a thousand human lives and 160 million French francs. Though Laokay is only 90m above sea level the terminus is at 1900m and the highest level is at 2025m. At another point, 650m above the West Canton River, the railway reaches 1709m. Trains ran on the narrow gauge (1m) line in daylight only, and the journey from Laokay to Kunming took two days. The Nanxi valley runs for some distance parallel to the Red River, gradually narrowing though the gradient is still slight It is bordered by steep bare slopes with a few patches of tropical forest or bush.

Here [at Wantang, where the line starts to ascend] the valley merged into an almost inaccessible gorge, its depths filled with virgin tropical savannah forest The line climbed over bridges and through tunnels up on to a hillside consisting of sedimentary slate capped with limestone, and through a landscape which, in its winter garb at least, reminded us of the terrain above the treeline on the Brenner pass. A detour into the side valley of the Bai He gained some 300m in height The Bai He itself was crossed by a 90m high iron bridge between two curving tunnels. With its tunnels, galleries and viaducts the line was reminiscent of the Semmering, but despite its far larger scale the barren landscape was not nearly comparable in beauty. The builders realised too late that they had chosen the wrong side of the valley, where the line cuts the steeply inclined strata which [p.2:] form the actual slope, and therefore had to contend with continual landslips, which cover the track with rubble for several months in the rainy season. Malicious tongues assert that they alternate — this year in the stretch constructed by one contractor, next year in that built by the other. After a short gorge, in which the line ran close to the stream in a cutting blasted out of the rock, the train steamed out on to the karst landscape of the Yunnan plateau, the lower slopes covered with terraced paddy fields and the heights crowned by steep jagged crests. Below Luoshuitang the line made a loop to ascend another valley, down which a waterfall tumbled, and then ran through a tunnel into the Mengzi basin.

Rice fields shimmered in the valley, and in the distance the lake came into view. The town of Mengzi, over 6km from the railway, lay in a depression of red earth divided into fields. The horizon was marked by the mountain range of Dahei Shan, none of its numerous peaks rising much above the rest Hewn out of the rock, the line ran across fissured limestone pavement, passing small hollows (polje) planted with vegetables, beans, bananas and castor oil. Elsewhere the ground was covered by tall sedges, mainly acid-loving. Ami-zhou (now Kaiyuan), on a branch of the Baida He (now Nanpan Jiang) which drains into the West Canton River, was the station where travellers spent the night From there the track went a little further down to the river itself and then straight northwards, rising gently along the well filled river. For long stretches it ran through deep gorges, their steeply sloping sides covered with a dense growth of mainly evergreen shrubs and low trees, except where the dark limestone outcropped in vertical faces. Between the gorges the valley broadened into sparsely cultivated areas with pinewoods and Yi villages, the houses built of unbaked mudbricks with minute windows and tall thatched roofs. This marked a second mistake in the planning of the railway, namely that the engineers chose this unpopulated terrain, probably because of die easier gradients, instead of the more westerly route, where prosperous towns lie in the fertile basins round the lakes. The only town which we touched was Yiliang (1690m). At the north west border of its intensively cultivated basin the railway turned sharply to the west, leaving the Baida He, and climbed steeply through a gorge with low vertical rocky walls, passing through numerous tunnels and over viaducts. We passed Lake Yangzhong Hai and, high above its west bank, reached the summit level on the Qigongpo ridge with splendid views over the azure lake, which was surrounded partly by terraced cultivation and partly by bare soil, deep red in colour, while the foreground became more and more karst-like. From there on the line ran gentry downhill. The soil turned into a yellowish brown marl. The edge of the plain was largely covered by graves and burial mounds, but elsewhere it was green with bean fields, kitchen gardens and cypress alleys, which occupied the ground between the grey-brown villages and made it difficult to get a general view of the terrain. We had only an occasional glimpse of the lake, but our gaze was riveted by the vertical precipice on its far side. Then the line curved to the right and that evening (4 February) the train steamed into the capital city of Kunming.

Twice-a-week cross-border passenger service (involving the passengers having to transfer from a Chinese train to a Vietnamese train at the border station) operated as late as 2000, but landslides caused frequent delays. Eventually, the passenger service on the Chinese section of the railway was terminated, and this section is now used for only freight.

On the Vietnamese side, passenger trains continue to run from Hanoi to the border town of Lao Cai.

The railway was built as an extension of a line from Haiphong to Laocai, through the capital Hanoi and roughly parallel to the Red River, which was opened in sections between 1903 and 1906. The Compagnie de Chemin de fer de l'Indo-Chine et du Yunnan (CIY) was established to operate both the Vietnamese and Chinese sections of the line.

Robert Lee of the University of Western Sydney, Macarthur, said "The human cost was great and the technological achievement spectacular."

History
The Yunnan–Vietnam railway was first conceived by Jean Marie de Lanessan, Governor-General of French Indochina from 1891 to 1894. De Lanessan had been convinced of the necessity of building railways to connect the different parts of Indochina, and had identified certain key routes that should be built as a matter of priority; among these, a route connecting Hanoi and Saigon, and another connecting Hanoi and Lao Cai. His recommendations were seized upon by Paul Doumer, Governor-General from 1897 to 1902, who proposed them as part of an overarching plan to develop railway infrastructure in Indochina. Doumer expected that the establishment of a railway line leading into resource-rich Yunnan would allow France to gain a foothold there, which fell in line with France's desire to use Indochina as a stepping stone to gaining privileged access to the Chinese market. His proposal to the French government, submitted soon after his appointment in 1897, included plans for a Haiphong–Kunming line, which would eventually become the Yunnan–Vietnam Railway. This line, approved in 1898, was the only railway line proposed by Doumer to be accepted in its entirety.

Construction
Construction began in 1898 at the instigation of Paul Doumer, then Governor-General of Indochina, and would end in 1910.

The Hanoi–Haiphong railway, which began construction in 1900, was the first leg to be completed. Long Bien Bridge was constructed to allow uninterrupted rail traffic along the Yunnan–Vietnam line; construction of the bridge started in 1898 and was completed in 1902. It was inaugurated as Paul Doumer Bridge, and was the largest bridge in Southeast Asia at that time.

The Hanoi–Lao Cai leg was opened in segments beginning in 1903, finally reaching Lao Cai (across the Nam Ti River from Hekou) in 1906. Beginning in 1906, the railway was extended across the river to Kunming, finally opening in its entirety in 1910.

The French Foreign Ministry secured Chinese permission to build a railway from Laocai (Laokay), on the Sino-Vietnamese frontier, to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, in April 1898. Like the British line, this concession was part of the 'scramble for concessions' in China which marked the apogee of Western imperialism in Asia. The Governor-General of Indo-China, Paul Doumer, hoped to use the railway as a means for seizing Yunnan and annexing it to Indo-China, but was prevented from doing so both by cooler heads in Paris and by the extent of Chinese popular opposition revealed during survey work on the line. This was taking place at the time of the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 in north China. Moreover, many French officials recognised that, even though their route into Yunnan was more favoured by geography than the British, there were limits to the use of the railway to create a hinterland. In particular they recognised that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for their railway to compete with the navigable waters of the Yangtze and thus draw the trade of Sichuan to Haiphong. In other words hinterlands had their natural boundaries, which even the most ambitious railways could only slightly alter. Thus Shanghai, situated at the mouth of one of the world's greatest navigable rivers would always beat Haiphong, terminus of a narrow gauge railway, in a contest for the domination of southwestern interior of China. Thus, the capital to build the railway was only attracted by a French government guarantee on its interest.

Human cost
Construction of the Yunnan—Vietnam railway was an extremely difficult undertaking, incurring not only great expenditures but also a great loss of human life. The unfavourable topography of the Nam-Ti valley, at the southern end of the railway's Chinese section, also posed special difficulties for construction, and many of the casualties suffered during construction occurred in this area. During that era, malaria was endemic; even today, Clements et al. report that the province of Yunnan has one of the highest rates of malaria in all of China. Disease was so rampant on the site that, out of a workforce of 929 contractors and technicians belonging to the Compagnie de Chemin de fer de l'Indo-Chine et du Yunnan (CIY), no more than 400 workers at a time—less than 50%—were able-bodied enough to work. At least 80 European managers and contractors died, whether due to disease or accidents.

Deaths among the labourers—"coolies"—recruited for construction work were much more frequent. Of the 60,000 labourers who worked on the railway, at least 12,000 are reported to have died, 10,000 of those in the Nam-Ti Valley alone. In 1909, the Peking Daily News claimed a much higher figure of 40,000 workers, although Lee (2003) considers their estimate to be exaggerated in light of the frankness of the French reports. Others have given estimates in between the two figures.

Indeed, there was a drastic gap between the grandeur of the French “civilizing mission” as it was represented in the imagery of railways and the tragic history of railway construction in Yunnan. At the beginning of the period of construction, many Vietnamese peasants willingly signed contracts with the construction companies, but harsh labor conditions and an outburst of malaria killed the majority of such volunteers during the rst two years of work. Later, the French government resorted to coercion to recruit more than 65,000 workers (Compagnie Français 1910). During construction, more than 12,000 native workers died—approximately 20 percent of the workforce; eighty French and Italian workers also lost their lives (Compagnie Français 1910). The coolies thus paid an exorbitant price for fulfilling French ambitions in China. Moreover, the railway hardly brought prosperity to the local population.

Railway construction raised many concerns among intellectuals at the time. Even though it facilitated the movement of people and goods, the modernization of transportation also disturbed life in Indochina in many ways. New railways ran through rice elds and burial sites; peasants were overburdened with new taxes and were pressed with their corvée duties (Lâm 2000). A bitter description of French imperialism appeared in the underground newspaper Lao Nong (Workers and peasants). Even though the following passage was written in 1927, it reected the grim realities of the French “civilizing mission”: To this day, some naïve people still think that France came to “civilize” the Vietnamese. Those people live in tall houses with wide gates; they occupy important jobs and powerful positions; they never open their eyes to see how the imperialists are pilfering our resources and how they squash our compatriots. Right now, imperialist France uses all of its exploiting power to steal from its colonies in order to support its own economy. That’s why, in Indochina, they are busily laying down railroad tracks, clearing wild forests, conscating rice- elds and land, taking advantage of our cheap labor. (Lao Nong 1927, quoted in Lâm 2000, 71)

Vietnamese intellectuals wanted to spread knowledge about the extremely high human costs of imperialism: on rubber plantations, “countless numbers of people are dying everyday. . . from 1,000 coolies in Budop, 474 died” (Lao Nong 1927, quoted in Lâm 2000, 89). Doumer reformed the tax system in 1898 to make railway construction possible. In addition to changing tax payments from kind to cash, now the Frenchmen rather than the court would enforce the production monopolies for alcohol and salt (Marr 1971). Laborers who were recruited through the corvée system not only had to leave their villages but also had to rely on their own rice supplies. Overburdening people with taxes resulted in demonstrations and violence in 1908, with uprisings often spurred by scholars-gentry. The slogan “Don’t pay taxes to the French” became diffused rapidly in February 1908; many tax collectors were beaten, some fatally. The year 1908 witnessed dozens of casualties among Vietnamese peasants and French soldiers alike; the year culminated with a plot to poison the soldiers of the French garrison in Hanoi. Two hundred eighty-ve riots erupted throughout China in 1910 (Chesneaux 1973), many encouraged by the building of railways.

Construction began in 1904 and was extraordinarily difficult. The terrain, especially in the Namti valley near the Vietnamese frontier, was about as unfavourable for railway construction as could be imagined. For not only was the topography extremely rough, but the area was almost uninhabited and very unhealthy. Malaria was endemic. Coolies recruited to build the railway died in enormous numbers, as much a result of the contractors' neglect as the rigours of the conditions. At least 12,000 of the 60,000 coolies who worked on the project died, as well as about eighty of the European subcontractors. The Peking Daily News claimed in 1909 that 40,000 coolies died, although this figure seems exaggerated when it is compared with reports of French consular officials, who were frank and honest in their condemnation of the CIY's dastardly behaviour towards its employees.(14)Murders, thefts and assaults were common, as the CIY acted like a conqueror in a defeated land. The mortality shocked even the far from squeamish editor of that voice of the Western imperialist in China, the Shanghai North China Daily News, who described it as a 'grave scandal'.(15)

The railway's violent origins have meant that it has come to be for the Chinese a sinister symbol of foreign domination, and for the French as much a cause for reflection and shame as of pride. In Lucien Bodard's novel, La Duchesse, this 'maudit chemin de fer' and, beside it, 'la forêt anthropophage, qui avale dans sa gloutonnérie ... les cadavres des coolies' become a symbol of evil and terror, the railway's site described simply as an 'abattoir'.(17) Never have I seen a railway used as so powerful a symbol, and this in a novel by a man who is always associated with French imperial ideas in east and southeast Asia. As well as being a bloody enterprise, it was enormously expensive, the 464 kilometres costing 166,755,000 francs.(18) Traffic was very modest until the 1930s, and increased dramatically between 1937 and 1940 when the railway was the Chongqing Government's lifeline. For this reason it was bombed by the Japanese and eventually closed under Japanese pressure. It has never since operated as an international railway, although both the Chinese and Vietnamese sections remain in service. Its political significance during the Sino-Japanese war, the loss of life involved in its construction, and its spectacular engineering achievements, all make this French railway in China a site of world significance. This is especially true of the 150 kilometres of the steep climb in Namti valley section, which is where most of the deaths occurred and where the most spectacular bridges are located. While the Gotkeik's history is not as violent, and its political significance was never quite as great, this mighty bridge is also worthy of such status.

World War II
From the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the railway served as a channel for arms shipments to the Chinese Kuomintang, backed by a number of French politicians and businessmen. Japan demanded the cessation of all shipments of war-related goods to China through Tonkin, but the French administration turned a deaf ear to their concerns. In fact, despite Japanese protests, shipping along the Yunnan–Haiphong line continued to grow, from 3,000 tons per month in 1937 to 20,000 tons per month in 1940; around half consisted of arms, fuel and materials supplied by the Allies. Japan retaliated by invading and occupying French Indochina in 1940.

A 178-km stretch was destroyed during the Japanese occupation of China, along with the great bridge over the Red River at Hekou on the Vietnam border. The Yunnan portion of the line was not repaired until 1956-1958.(Beyond the Great Wall: urban form and transformation on the Chinese frontiers. Piper Rae Gaubatz. Stanford University Press, 1996. 0804723990)

The Japanese used the railway system extensively during their occupation, inviting sabotage by the Viet Minh as well as airborne Allied bombing raids. The railways sustained considerable damage, including the destruction of bridges. During the Japanese occupation Japanese National Railways Class 9600 2-8-0 locomotives were shipped to aid their invasion, and after the completion of the "death railway" it was possible for a time to send through traffic to Burma and hence to the Indian metre gauge network. This is now not possible, as sections of the railway were destroyed during the conflicts since World War II.

Vietnam War
In North Vietnam, American bombing of railways was concentrated on key targets such as railway bridges, both along the North–South Railway and along the lines north of Hanoi, such as the Hanoi–Lao Cai and Hanoi–Dong Dang lines. Operation Rolling Thunder was the first large-scale bombing campaign carried out by the U.S. Air Force, taking place from March 2, 1965 until November 1, 1968, when US President Lyndon B. Johnson temporarily called off air raids. Large-scale air raids resumed from May 9 to October 23, 1972, for Operation Linebacker, and again from December 18–29, 1972, for Operation Linebacker II, with fewer target restrictions than Rolling Thunder.

Continuous US air raids remained our major issue. [...] The U.S. bombing almost cut off the two major rail lines, the Hanoi–Youyiguan (or He–You, the eastern line) and Hanoi–Lao Cai (or He–Lao, the northwestern line) railroads. When the Chinese railway engineering troops arrived in late June 1965, many parts of the railways were severely damaged and not functioning. Moreover, the tracks were French-built meter gauge [1,000 mm] rails, and hard to be replaced. The division command decided to reconstruct these two old railways with the standard track gauge [1,435 mm] by adding the third rail to the meter gauge tracks [...] which could double the shipping capacity by using both Vietnamese and standard locomotives and cargo cars. Meanwhile, the rail transports continued without interruption during the railway makeovers. [...]

By December 23, 1965, our division had completed reconstruction of 363 kilometers of two rail lines by spending 757,000 work days. The reconstruction significantly increased shipping capacity. [...T]he Hanoi–Youyiguan line almost doubled its annual transport capacity, an increase from 1.4 million tons to 2.8 million tons. The reconstruction also improved these two railroads by adding dozens of new train stations, bridges, and tunnels. [...] Our division headquarters also designed a new strategic, standard gauge railroad between Kep and Thai Nguyen to serve as an east-west circuitous supplementary link between the Hanoi–Thai Nguyen and Hanoi–Youyiguan north-south lines. [...]

According to our division's estimates, from June 1965 to October 1968, the American airplanes dropped 288,000 bombs along these railways. In the peak month of June 1967, the American planes dropped 9.6 tons of ordnance per kilometer of these railways, and 2.5–6.3 tons per meter of the major railway bridges.

On August 11, 1967, the U.S. Air Force heavily bombed the Long Bien Bridge [...] Despite frequent air raids, the Chinese troops worked day and night and completed their repair within eighteen days. On September 30, the rail traffic resumed over the bridge.

Between August 1965 and February 1969, the First Division had accomplished 1,178 repair missions for damaged railways and facilities, disarmed 3,100 time-delay bombs, rebuilt 157 kilometers of destroyed railway tracks, built 39 new rail bridges, constructed 14 tunnels, laid 8 kilometers of underwater cable, and repaired 1,420 kilometers of railroad telephone lines. [...] Our troops stayed in Vietnam until 1970.

Sino–Vietnamese War
The outbreak of the Sino–Vietnamese War in 1979 resulted in the closing of borders, including railways; particularly, the railway bridge that connected Lao Cai and Hekou on the Yunnan–Vietnam line was destroyed by sabotage during the conflict.

The Kunming-Hekou line was rebuilt at meter gauge in 1980. (Beyond the Great Wall: urban form and transformation on the Chinese frontiers. Piper Rae Gaubatz. Stanford University Press, 1996. 0804723990)

The Yunnan–Vietnam Railway was only reopened in 1993, following a bilateral agreement between Vietnamese and Chinese authorities. At that time, however, crossing the border between Lao Cai and Hekou required disembarking from the train and travelling by foot to the station on the opposite side.

The re-opening of the railway between China and Vietnam, in February 1996, is an event that is particularly relevant to study in the context of the land border issue. The major reason for not resuming the railway traffic earlier during the 1990s was the disputed border area of 300 meters between the provinces of Guangxi and Lang Son. This issue was not settled despite the fact that the railway linking Pingxing and Dong Dang goes through the disputed area.xix Since the area was under Chinese control, the part of the railway passing through it was restored and operated by China. Thus, Vietnam agreed to allow China to control and manage the railway in the area but, Vietnam did not renounce its claim to it. The rationale behind Vietnam’s concession is not publicly known, but one reason could be that Vietnam was looking for expanded economic interaction with China and resumed rail transport would facilitate official trade. It could also be that Vietnam obtained Chinese concessions on other matters in exchange. However, since Vietnam did not renounce its sovereignty claim to the area, it is unlikely that China made any concessions on the territorial issues, nor that China can be expected to be more amenable to Vietnamese claims to other disputed areas along the land border or in relation to the other border disputes. With the signing of the Land Border Treaty and the demarcation process to be carried out on the ground, all disputed areas along the land border will be settled. (http://www.eias.org/publications/briefing/2000/borderdisputes.pdf)

An agreement “in principle” on railway “transportation” was reached during the visit by the then Secretary General of the CPV, Do Muoi, to China on 26 November to 2 December 1995 (For the text of the “Sino-Vietnamese Joint Communiqué” see ibid., 2477 G/1–2 (4 December 1995)). During the months of January and February 1996, bilateral relations focused on the preparations for the resumption of railway traffic. Discussions between the Chinese Ministry of Railways and the Vietnamese Ministry of Communication and Transport were held and custom procedures were announced on January 31. Furthermore, work on the repair and upgrading of the railway links was carried out enabling the resumption of traffic on 14 February 1996 (ibid., 2518 B/4 (25 January 1996); 2524 B/1; 2525 B/4 (2 February 1996); 2536 B/4 (15 February 1996); and, 2539 G/3 (19 February 1996)). (http://www.eias.org/publications/briefing/2000/borderdisputes.pdf)

The agreement on opening the railway links between the two countries related to linking Dong Dang and Lao Cai on the Vietnamese side with Pingxing and Shanyao respectively on the Chinese side, thus connecting the provinces of Lang Son and Guangxi, and the provinces of Lao Cai and Yunnan, respectively (BBC/FE 2477 B/3; 2494 B/5 (23 December 1995); and, 2524 B/1 (1 February 1996)). (http://www.eias.org/publications/briefing/2000/borderdisputes.pdf)

Stations
The Kunming terminus was once Today, this is where the China-Vietnam Railway begins. But the real starting point is what used to be the Kunming South Station, which has disappeared over the years with the development of this south-western Chinese city.

Infrastructure
The French built a remarkable number of such engineering feats: on a 460-kilometer section between Lào Cai and Yunnan-Fu (Kunming), French engineers designed and built 107 viaducts and 155 tunnels. The 860-kilometer stretch between Hải Phòng and Kunming required a total of 3,777 bridges, viaducts, and tunnels (Lorin 2004).

Three masterpieces of French engineering are the pont Doumer (Doumer Bridge) across the Red River in Hanoi; the pont sur Albalétriers (Crossbow Bridge) at kilometer 111 near Mengzi (then spelled Mong-Tseu in French sources), Yunnan; and the pont en dentelle (Steel Lace Viaduct) at kilometer 83 in Yunnan.

There was a gauge branch line from Jijie to Gejiu which operated 0-10-0 tender locos built by Baldwin Locomotive Works. The metre gauge section was originally administered in more or less the same way as the Indochinese networks; it would have been physically possible for through trains to run from Kunming to Singapore, as metre gauge was used in Malaya also.

Tracks
The railway climbs on a steady grade of 1 in 40, even though the Namti River it follows at one point drops 600 metres in three kilometres. Curvature is a consistent 100 metres radius. gauge tracks, like most of the other railways built in Indochina.

Bridges
The bridge across the Red River in Hanoi—named the Doumer Bridge and now known as Long Biên—is one of most spectacular French technological masterpieces in Asia (g. 1). It symbolized the role of French engineers in the conquest of nature, especially since the Red River was known for its changing currents and ery temperament. Between 1897 and 1901, and at a cost of 6.1 million francs, the Eiffel Company drew designs and supervised the construction of the 1,668-meter-long bridge, the longest bridge that the French had built in Asia by this time (Weill 1995). Its deck rises 13 meters above water level and consists of eighteen piers separated by spans between 78 meters and 106 meters long. Its foundation descends more than 30 meters below the riverbed (Hulot and others 1990).

On the 464 kilometre section from Laocai to Kunming, there are 107 important viaducts, most steel, some stone, and 155 tunnels. Between kilometres 104 and 127 the line climbed from 500 to 1,100 metres through 59 tunnels, many joined by viaducts. The steel viaducts were built in France and hauled to the work sites by teams of beasts or men.

The two most spectacular bridges are the eight-pier curved bridge at kilometre 83, called 'le pont en dentelles' and the 'pont sur arbalétriers' at kilometre 111, awesomely hanging from sheer cliffs over Fausse Namti between two tunnels about 100 metres above the torrent below. The railway was opened through to Kunming on 31 January 1910.(16)

Development
The Hanoi – Lao Cai railway is part of the Kunming to Haiphong transport corridor, which plays an important role in international and regional trade. An expressway standard road is to be built along the corridor. Very high rail traffic is anticipated, with freight volumes approximately trebling and passenger volumes nearly doubling. The objective of this Study was to determine the investments necessary to enable the railway to carry the expected increase in traffic to 2020, when it is expected that a new standard gauge railway, running on the other side of the Red River, will be built. The Study encompassed civil engineering, operational and rolling stock studies, as well as environmental, socio-economic and resettlement components, together with economic and financial appraisal. Interventions to increase capacity and ensure the future operation of the line were examined and subjected to economic and financial analysis (as described below).

According to Chinese news agencies, some investment continues to be made to keep the railway running. For example, it was reported in 2004 that 100 million yuan (USD $12 million) was to be spent to buy 10 new diesel locomotives for the railway. As of 2008, upgrade work was said to be continuing on the Chinese side. The railway is eventually expected to form part of the Singapore-Kunming Rail Link, which is slated for to be completion in 2015.

The Pan-Asia Railway, which is under construction, will become a main passageway from Yunnan to the ASEAN countries, forming a continental bridge for sea transport and enabling less-developed areas in Yunnan to become part of ACFTA. The feasibility report for the Kunming-Singapore Railway, written by a Malaysian consultancy company, was completed in June 2001. Three alternatives (east, central, west) were proposed. During the Sixth ASEAN Transport Ministers meeting, these and a further three alternatives were discussed. Eventually, the eastern line was recommended, after taking into account the countries being covered and the cost of construction. Currently, China has completed a study on a railway plan for Yunnan, reviewing three of the proposed alternatives. Both the State Council and the Yunnan government have arried at a consensus to begin with the section from Yuxi to Hekou, making it a priority project that will link up with the Pan-Asia Railway. The Chinese government's attitude towards the central and east proposals is open, encouraging domestic enterprises to participate. China will expedite the construction of the Kunming-Hekou railway by using the existing Kunming-Yuxi Railway and upgrading the Yuxi-Hekou Railway, which needs to be re-gauged. A section of railway from Hanoi to Laojie is also being planned. Although the transport of both passengers and goods between China and Vietnam has recovered from the disruption that resulted from the uneasy relations that existed between the two countries for some decades, the current annual rail transport capacity between the two countries is only about 1,500,000 tonnes due to operational difficulties. (The Pan-Pearl River Delta: an emerging regional economy in a globalizing China. Yue-man Yeung, Jianfa Shen. Chinese University Press, 2008. 9629963760.