JOURNEY INTO HISTORY

Zhang Xiang leaves his home at around 7:30 am and after 30 minutes he takes photos of the day's first steam train passing through rapeseed fields.

Then he jumps into his car and before the train arrives at its next station, at around 8:40 am, he captures the train puffing smoke. He has the timetable in his mind.

It has been 24 years since the 48-year-old started taking photos of the vintage train.

Known as a "living fossil of the Industrial Revolution", the narrow-gauge steam train runs on a 19-kilometer track through the misty and mountainous suburbs of Southwest China's Sichuan province, providing a journey of reminiscence. It is reported to provide one of the last regular passenger steam train services in the world.

Built to haul coal in 1958, the railway connected Shixi town and Bagou town in Qianwei county, Leshan, Sichuan, and later a couple of passenger coaches were added to the train. It once served as the only way for locals to travel between the two towns.

In the late 1990s, local coal resources started running out, and the train was suspended in 2003.

With his grandfather and father working at the Jiayang coal mine, Zhang joined the mining group in 1999 and his first task was to take the last photos and videos of the coal train. Zhang's childhood memories are closely connected to the train, which has served local communities for decades.

One year after the coal train stopped running, the local government listed passenger steam trains and the railway as industrial heritage to protect. In 2010, a national park was built, consisting of the railway and a nearby closed coal mine.

As steam trains have been taken off track in most of the world, the old-fashioned locomotive in Sichuan has attracted tourists from home and abroad.

With the train becoming popular with tourists, the fortunes of the declining mining town of Bagou have turned around.

Some of the residences have been renovated and operated as guesthouses for visitors today.

Zhang also serves as a tourist guide, safety patroller and ticket seller during bloom seasons — March for rape flowers and August and September for sunflowers — besides taking photos.

His lifelong passion is "recording the Jiayang steam train".

On short-video platform Douyin, Zhang has posted more than 900 videos, capturing the railroad scenes out of the country's past.

Garnering more than 730,000 likes, his account has attracted about 60,000 followers. A Douyin user named Yunwuxin comments, "Your posts bring our childhood memories back."