Rail service in rural Sichuan is a lifeline for local people and a big pull for tourists who want a last glimpse of the age of steam

It isn’t the quickest of commuter trains, taking 75 minutes to cover just 12 miles. Nor is it the quietest: speech is barely audible over the rattles and blasts of steam. It is certainly not the most comfortable. Passengers jolt along in unlit cars and on windy days their clothes are specked with ash.

But the journey from Shixi to Huangcunjing may well be the most memorable ride they will ever experience. The narrow-gauge railway, running through a lush valley in Sichuan, is one of the last regular passenger steam train services in the world.

“Steam locomotives are about the nearest thing man has ever created to a living creature,” said David Longman, who has photographed working steam locomotives all over the world.

The steam train takes passengers from Shixi to Huangcunjing in Sichuan province. Photograph: Tania Branigan/Guardian

Now their numbers are in such swift decline that updating his website “is like running an obituaries page”, he said. “It’s been a steady decline since the turn of the century. Virtually everything has gone.”

China is one of the few countries where they still run for practical – mostly industrial – purposes rather than as tourist attractions, but even here the services are fast disappearing.

Shixi lies three hours’ drive from Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan. In recent years, tourist carriages have been added to the regular trains and extra sightseeing services scheduled. But for residents, this is still their lifeline.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Passengers wait to board the train, which takes 75 minutes to travel about 12 miles. Photograph: Tania Branigan/The Guardian

Until a couple of years ago, there was no road to the last stops on the line. The area’s new concrete road still does not reach most of the stations and is too narrow for much traffic so even now, people walk or ride motorbikes straight down the railway line.

For those who pay the five yuan (50p) fare, on busy days the few seats soon run out and passengers must cling to a rail suspended from the ceiling as the train bumps over the track. Women lug vegetables in woven baskets on their backs as they clamber on. There is no glass in the windows: when it rains, you get wet or pull up the metal shutters and sit in darkness.

But on fine days you admire the bamboo groves, rice terraces and fields of flowers. Residents rush out as the train passes, armed with tongs to pick up dropped embers for their stoves.

A brief flirtation with diesel engines in the early 1990s was soon abandoned, probably because it was not cost-efficient. So the service continues at its old pace, so slow that, were Mo Farah to race it, he could celebrate his victory with a leisurely cup of tea before it had caught up.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The view from one of the carriages, which lack windows and lighting. Photograph: Tania Branigan/The Guardian

China now boasts 6,800 miles of high-speed track, with trains running 18 times faster than those on the Shixi line. But this railway too seemed like a step into the future when it was completed in 1959. It was built as part of the Great Leap Forward, Mao’s insanely ambitious modernisation drive in industry and agriculture, which led to a devastating famine that killed tens of millions.

Thousands of workers toiled on this short stretch of track. “We didn’t have equipment. It was all manpower: there were people everywhere,” said a man in his 70s who worked on the project as a teenager. “We started work before dawn and by the time we finished it would be dark.”

The train was used to carry freight from the mine at Huangcunjing, which opened in the 1930s as a Sino-British joint venture. Previously, workers had pushed the coal to a nearby river by wheelbarrow. Soon after it opened, carriages were added for the miners and their families who lived a short walk away, at Bagou. Since then, the train has carried an estimated 11.6 million people and 18m tonnes of coal.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest There are not enough seats on the train, meaning travellers often have to stand. Photograph: Tania Branigan/The Guardian

Liang Shufang, 82, moved to Bagou when she married a miner in 1950. Others soon followed her, as workers gained more status under Communist rule. “At the beginning, girls didn’t respect miners and didn’t want to marry them. Then miners got better lives and better pay … Being a worker was a very powerful thing,” she said.

The arrival of the railway completed Bagou’s transformation into a booming industrial town, with more than 7,000 residents. Miners held mass sports events in the main square and performances on its grand stage. Later, during the Cultural Revolution, the platform hosted vicious struggle sessions as factions battled.

Chairman Mao’s portrait still hangs over the square and slogans from the era adorn the walls of nearby buildings. This is the town that time forgot.

The pit closed in 1988, when the coal seam was exhausted. The schools, the hospital and the grand workers’ theatre soon followed. Plants poke through the tiled roofs of abandoned homes. Butterflies the size of a hand flutter past, flashing emerald.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Old houses back on to the stream at Bagou in Sichuan province, China. It was once a thriving industrial town but was abandoned by many residents after the mine closed in the 1980s. Photograph: Tania Branigan/The Guardian

Perhaps 1,000 residents remain, living off their savings, government benefits and the food they grow: plantains, rice, soy beans and pomelos. “After they built the railway, these streets were full of people,” recalled Zhao Bingrun, 65, as he stood at the door of his store, beneath fading characters reading: “Chairman Mao is the reddest sun in the heart of revolutionary people everywhere in the world.”

His shop is one of the few still open on what used to be the busy main street and he would sell it if he could find a buyer. Further down, a hen scratches in the dirt; a cat lazes on a windowsill. “Without the tourists, this place would be completely empty,” Zhao said.

Daytrippers arrive on sightseeing trains, which cost 10 times the regular fare and have ensured the standard services can keep running.

Most travellers come from Sichuan, but some from Japan, Russia, the UK and even Afghanistan: rail enthusiasts eager to witness the last puffs of the age of steam.

Additional research by Luna Lin