Burning Coal to Conserve Copper: Locomotive Technology and Resource Constraints in China, 1952–78

The Fuxin railway yard lay shrouded in coal smoke that poured from idle steam locomotives awaiting shift change. Despite billboards encouraging coal conservation and safeguarding of natural resources, the engines turned the railyard into a hellscape of coal smoke and steam, billowing into the neighboring apartment complex. This grim 2016 scene resulted from natural resources policy decisions made over a half-century earlier in Mao-era China (1949-1976). In this paper, I argue that resource considerations, specifically a desire to save coal and non-ferrous metals, determined locomotive policy in China in 1952-1978. By conserving coal and copper through the adoption of certain locomotive technologies, China devoted limited natural resources to other industries. These technological decisions determined the course of China’s carbon-focused, labor-intensive railway development which impacted the environment.

By examining China National Railways (CNR), the nation’s largest consumer of coal, I demonstrate how resource considerations influence technological and political decisions made by an industrializing state. CNR engineers balanced scarcity of coal and copper in a complex calculus between technological development, resource availability, and thermal efficiency. Environmental resource availability steered human decisions regarding technological development, which in turn, shaped the longer history of the environment in China. Thus, this paper illustrates the mutually constitutive interactions between nature, humans, and technology, combining environmental, technological, and social history.

Beginning in 1952, locomotive engineers improved thermal efficiency to conserve coal and non-ferrous metals by constructing improved steam locomotives. Later, CNR developed diesel and electric locomotives to further improve thermal efficiency and coal conservation. However, these new technologies required precious copper, impractical for the developing nation. In response, CNR returned to steam locomotives to reduce copper demand while implementing numerous technological and managerial measures to improve thermal efficiency and conserve resources through the 1980s. The long-term environmental, social, and economic impacts of these technical decisions echo today.