They had even bought knives and forks for us, a fact that was very appreciated by some people who had not the necessary training using chopsticks. Trains near the Great Wall Very near the Great Wall, at Badaling, is also the railway line with passenger trains from Beijing to Datong. The line has a steep grade. We did not get all the details, but the grade seems to be 30 promille, with very sharp curves, down to 150 m radius. There are many nice photo positions along the line.
Trains going downwards drive slowly.
At between stations there are special tracks on the downside going upwards, maybe for emergency braking runaway cars, or for accommodating helper locomotives. Trains upwards had 2 DF4 engines and up to 14 cars. Just to the west of the Great Wall there is a switchback station called Qinglongqiao. At that station, one of the locomotives changes its position from the front to the back of the train. We observed downwards trains at Badaling, and they had one DF4 in front and one in the back.