I may have mentioned this before, but the site below has good photos of all the engines at both the Shenyang and Beijing railway museums, plus trip reports and photos from visits to the Pingdingshan line and the Guangzhou steel works. The Shenyang museum (at least at the time of the 2001 visit) has numerous engines from retired classes, several of foreign manufacture. The locomotives sit outdoors, in poor condition. The new museum in Beijing is housed in a clean, sterile "big box" building with wide span trusses, and the engines have a just shopped appearance, some with the main rods not yet installed. The website is mostly in Chinese, but with some English information. Well worth a look.

http://www.railway-museums.com/

The Shenyang museum has also had a "big box" building erected for the locomotives as well, and most of the locomotives have been moved inside and cosmetically restored.

I have recieved photographs of the locomotives from both locations. The Beijing museum pictures went out in the November Update to Surviving World Steam Locomotives CD-ROM, the Shenyang pictures will go out in the May Update.

I mentioned this before, but the same individual also photographed the steam pumps found on the locomotives in both museums. If you look at the ones from the Shenyang museum, you can see both the diversity of locomotives at that location (read the captions), as well as the fact they are all cosmetically restored:

http://www.survivingworldsteam.com/gallery/album47

Here are the ones he photographed in the Beijing Museum:

http://www.survivingworldsteam.com/gallery/album42

Collectively, the pictures show how the Chinese standardized the steam pumps on their locomotives (and changed other details, including adding an all-weather cab) upon recieving them. You can also see how these two museums have little overlap in their collections; collectively, they represent most of the of the steam locomotive classes found in China over the last century.

-James Hefner
Hebrews 10:20a

Surviving World Steam Project

Found here:

http://home.c2i.net/schaefer/chinarail.html