With a long sound of bagpipes, the 6274/6271 train sprayed with "Red Pine Hometown" on the body slowly left Wuyiling Station, passed through the red pine forest deep in the Xiaoxing'an Mountains of Heilongjiang Province, and headed for Jiamusi Station.
Since its opening in the sixties of the last century, the train has been running in the mountains for more than 60 years. The "slow train", which has only 5 carriages, is not only an important means of transportation for people in the forest area, but also a "school bus" for children in the mountains to study.
The 6274/6271 train runs for 9 hours and 6 minutes each way, and the whole fare is 46.5 yuan, and the lowest fare is 4 yuan. There are 29 stations along the way, 12 of which are boarding and landing stations without platforms.
The conductor Sun Hongna is a veteran conductor of the Wuyiling line of the Panjin Racing Team in the Mudanjiang passenger section, and has been on this train for 10 years. "The people in the Xiaoxinganling forest area are relatively scattered, and the children along the line have to go to Yichun City and the surrounding districts and counties where schools are relatively concentrated."
Every year at the beginning of the school season, the number of students on the bus increases significantly. Sun Hongna introduced that since August 26, students living in the school and parents accompanying them have been going to the school one after another, and more than 100 people take this bus every day.
In order to meet the needs of the children's education, the forest farms and villages through which the train passes must be stopped.
At 8:26, the train stopped at Tangwanghe Station. At this time, the platform was already full of children who went to Youyou, Yichun, Nancha and other places to study, and there were many parents who accompanied them.
Mr. Liu, a 65-year-old resident of Tangwang County, is a tourist who travels to Tangwang County. He said that his granddaughter's study is more than 230 kilometers away from his home, and that he has been taking this bus to school since junior high school. "I also have a car at home, but the road in the mountains is not easy to walk, and the fare for this car is more than 200 kilometers, which is only 27.5 yuan, which is much more affordable than driving."
In order to improve the travel conditions of the people along the line and continue to help rural revitalization, at the beginning of 2022, China Railway Harbin Bureau Group Co., Ltd. carried out a comprehensive upgrade of the train, upgraded the coal-fired car body to an air-conditioned car body, comprehensively renovated the interior of the carriage, and set up three theme carriages: "Yumin Daji", "Xuemin Book Society" and "Ecological Tour".
In order to allow children to learn better on the way to school, the train also sets up bookcases, reading tables and seats in the "Xuemin Book Club" theme car, and is equipped with classic classics and popular science books suitable for middle school students to read, which are free for everyone to read.
When we arrived at the Friendship Station, there were more passengers on the train, and the carriage became lively. Li Qingqing, a passenger, said that back then, he took this train to go to elementary school, junior high school, and high school, and it was also the first time he took this train to go out of the mountains and report to the university. "Now that I'm working, I still can't do without it, this is the 'iron school bus' in our mountains!"
This "slow train" not only meets the needs of children to go out to study, but also the "fast train" for the people to get rich. Due to the whole journey through the forest area, the car can always gather a variety of wild mountain goods, as well as vegetables, eggs, meat and poultry from the districts and counties along the line.
Qi Yueying and her husband are local forest farm workers, who used to work in tree cutting and transportation, and have a good monthly income. With the implementation of the natural forest protection project by the state, the forest farm workers have changed careers to do mountain specialty planting with the encouragement of the local government department. Today, raspberry and blueberry cultivation has become the pillar industry of Qi Yueying's forest farm.
Every summer and autumn, when the harvest season arrives, villagers like Qi Yueying along the line will smile, and they will carry baskets of harvest fruits onto the train and transport them to the bazaars in Yichun, Xilin, Nancha or further Jiamusi, and sell them at a good price.
"We have plenty of sunshine and moderate rainfall, and we grow raspberries and blueberries on the farm." In the past few years, through the sale of mountain specialties, Qi Yueying's family has lived a good life. "I have two children, and the money for their education is all earned by me selling mountain specialties."
In order to facilitate the people in the forest area to sell mountain goods, the train staff prepared pliers, fine wires, woven bags and other items, and also added information windows at both ends of the carriage, so that passengers can write the information on sale or purchase on it, so as to help everyone's mountain goods find a market.
Across the country, there are dozens of pairs of such public welfare "slow trains", which mostly pass through remote areas, and the fares are generally not high. If high-speed rail and bullet trains are the main arteries of transportation, then "slow trains" are like capillaries, small but indispensable, and they help local people live better and happier with their unique warmth and rhythm.