Steam engines, and cold sunny mornings make a potent combination and are well suited to unconventional railway photography. Shafts of sunlight shining through the gaps between the wagons made patterns in the smoke as a pair of QJs worked up the final few yards to Dabaliang Tunnel at the summit of the long climb from Daban.
The locomotives, QJ 6828 & 6998, were working a Daban to Haoluku freight over Jingpeng Pass just after sunrise on 30 August 2003.