& Guangdong-Hainan Railway &; The embryonic form is in Jiangmen

The reporter's hometown is in Hunan. Every time he shuttles between Hunan and Jiangmen, he can't choose the train as a means of transportation, because there is no railway in Jiangmen, which sometimes becomes a difficult knot for Jiangmen people to open. But the old people in Jiangmen know that there was a railway in Jiangmen's history, which was once brilliant. It is the second commercial railway in China's railway history, Suning Railway, which is second only to Chaoshan Railway built by 1906.

At the end of the road is the terminal

That day, it was already rustling, and the trees in the south began to shed leaves. I tried to find the ruins of the office building at the terminal of sunning railway North Street. Entering the community of Ganhua Group, an old man gave me directions seriously.

He said, "The road under your feet used to be the place where the rails passed." I looked down and saw that the road under my feet was flat, but not wide, and it stretched forward, with short single dormitories on both sides. The corridor is densely covered with clothes, and the remaining moisture evaporates invisibly. Under the guidance of the old man, I walked along this path until I reached the leafy tree, and an ancient building came into view.

This cuboid building, with three floors in the main building and two floors attached to both sides, was the office building of sunning railway North Street Station in those days, and it was also the only thing in Jiangmen City that can remind people of sunning railway for a long time. The facade of the main building is about 6 meters long, and the arcade-style projects forward about 3 meters, with a bread roof and a large and deep arch eaves under it; There is also a small and exquisite spire with a square bottom and stripes on the top cover. Surprisingly, an ancient copper coin pattern is painted on the water mill platform downstairs; Unfortunately, the door of the building is closed.

The old man said that he had lived near this ancient building since the first day he moved to Jiangmen. The exact time when the building was built is unknown. The kapok and Ficus macrophylla growing in front of the building are obviously towering into the sky, and their tall figures can make people know that these trees were planted almost at the same time as the building was built. According to this calculation, the building has a history of at least 70 years. In such a long history, the office building of North Street Station has withstood the ravages of years, but it has also begun to age slowly. The color of the red brick is no longer bright, and the columns and wall columns have fallen off, and the shadow of the ban barge can be vaguely seen. Because of this, the buildings I saw were surrounded by bamboo shelves. The old man told me that there will be a renovation here recently, and the building will be more beautiful in the near future.

I also see that the soles of the buildings have now become a good place for nearby residents to relax. People playing cards and chatting are hiding in the shade of trees. Although they know that large-scale construction is about to take place here, they can still be so calm and relaxed. "Have any of you been here by train?" The reporter asked some old people, but no one responded.

The embryonic form of "Guangdong-Hainan Railway" is in Jiangmen.

Sun Ning Railway is the first railway in the history of railway construction in China. It chose to cross the river from the public welfare to Niuwan, which is narrow on the east river, and it can be said that it is the embryonic form of the "Guangdong-Hainan Railway". To this end, Niu Maru was once written into the prose "Poetry of Machines" by the famous writer Ba Jin.

1933, Ba Jin "became a passenger on the Suning Railway" from Huicheng to Gongyi, and he described in the article that "when he arrived in Tanjiang, the train stopped. The wheels didn't move, and the scenery outside began to move slowly. This is not a miracle. This is the most beautiful project in sunning railway. There is no bridge here. When the train gets on the boat, stay on the boat and let the boat cross the river slowly. " What is said here is the situation of Niuwan train ferry crossing the river.

In order to pursue this period of history, a colleague once followed Ba Jin's footsteps, crossed the river by a small ferry at the south bank pier of Jinniu Bay, and landed at the pier on the other side of the river in only about 20 minutes. This colleague said: "At that time, the ferry pier on the north bank of Niuwan Station was on the west side of our stop, but there was no trace of it. We can only see weeds. " At that time, standing on the shore, looking at the 400-meter-wide river surface and the ruins of the train ferry terminals on both sides, the scene of the train crossing the river by a big iron boat in those days can only be imagined: Captain Tie 105.57 meters, width 16.45 meters, laying the track for the train to board the ferry. Cranes were installed on both sides of the river, and the two sides were connected by round-trip steel cables. When crossing the river, the hoist starts and pulls the iron boat across the river.

If so, it didn't last long. On June 1937 10 and 15, Japanese planes attacked Taishan and Xinhui, and Suning Railway was bombed and paralyzed. The iron ship written by Ba Jin to transport trains also sank. A man named Li Laitian once wrote down his personal experience in detail: "My mother and I hurried out of the door and looked at the sound of the machine. I saw more than 10 Japanese planes hovering and bombing over Niuwan. After more than half an hour of bombing, I saw three Japanese planes flying to the public welfare port. My mother and I panicked and ran to a nearby tree to lie down. Three Japanese planes flew over the public welfare port, dropped bombs on the machinery factory again and again, and kept shooting with machine guns. At that time, the explosion and the sound of machine guns were deafening, the machinery factory was blown to the sky, and black smoke enveloped half of the public welfare port. At four o'clock in the evening, the Japanese plane flew away, and the whole public welfare port was crowded with people, only to know that the Niuwan iron boat crossing the river was sunk and the whole machine factory was bombed. "

"Long-awaited" and "Zhu Guang" are coming.

"I was born in 1947, when Suning Railway passed through a market town in Taishan, my hometown. I have known that there have been trains running there since I was a child, and I have been looking forward to opening to traffic with curiosity. Sometimes I even go to the abandoned roadbed and look at it eagerly. There is a passage in the book Touching the Past: The Survey of Sun Railway Sites, edited by love the water, is kind and simple to read and contains infinite love and expectation. Aishui once rode a bicycle to all the stations in sunning railway with the hope from childhood. He said: "I was so excited all the way that I couldn't sleep at night. "There are still many people in Jiangmen who are passionate about drying the railway like Ai Shui. Mei Weiqiang, vice president of the Overseas Chinese History Society of Wuyi University, also walked from Taishan to Jiangmen with the expedition team for many times, and spent a lot of effort to inspect the Sun Ning railway site.

In a sense, this is a memory of the past. Now, when the railway is directly linked to the economy, more Jiangmen locals or foreigners begin to have a wish: when can Jiangmen rebuild the railway and reopen the train? With the construction of Guangzhou-Zhuhai Railway put on the agenda again, it is certain that the railway will pass through Jiangmen, whether it is the east line, the middle line or the west line. No wonder people who are not proud of their net names post on the Internet: Jiangmen people will soon be able to touch the fragrant sleepers of the railway and see the heroic spirit of the railway passing through the city in a blink of an eye!