Where is the oldest railway station in Guangzhou?

The oldest railway station in Guangzhou is called Shiweitang Station. The station is located on the left bank of the Pearl River in Shiweitang, Fangcun District. The Pearl River flows from the northwest near Liwan Lake in the west of Guangzhou, and then divides into two roads, one to the east and the other to the southeast. Shiweitang stands on the southeast bank of the Pearl River intersection. This station is the Guangzhou terminal of the Guangzhou-San Railway, from Guangzhou to Sanshui, 50 kilometers to the west. This is not the main railway in Guangzhou, but it is the earliest railway, which was built as early as 1903.

Today, at Shiweitang Station, a row of simple wooden awnings is very eye-catching. The canopy is about 3 meters high and nearly 80 meters long, and it runs in the north-south direction and extends to the Pearl River Wharf. It is said that this canopy has not changed since the station was built. For a long time, there was no bridge between Fangcun and the urban area, so we had to ferry across the river. Passengers leaving the station walked directly into the dock along the awning that sheltered from the sun and rain. Next to the old platform, there is a section of railway track laid a hundred years ago. This nearly 300-meter-long rail is slightly thinner than today's rail, and its surface is rusty. According to reports, this is a branch line for locomotive maintenance. Until the 1960s, there were still trains running to this branch line every day for routine maintenance.

At first, Shiweitang Station was only for guests to get on and off, and did not handle cargo consignment. 1955 began to operate freight. Later, when the Pearl River Bridge was completed, the road leading to Foshan became more and more smooth, and the Guangzhou-Guangzhou Railway turned passenger transport into freight transport. Until March 1992, Shiweitang old station stopped handling passenger transport business after nearly 90 years of operation and has been engaged in freight transport alone.

During the period of Spring Festival travel rush in the early days of the People's Republic of China, there were 44 trains every day at Shiweitang Station, with a peak passenger flow of nearly 80,000 passengers a day. It started at 5: 30 in the morning and closed at 9: 30 in the evening. At that time, the only land passage from Guangzhou to Foshan was the Guangzhou-San Railway. Many Guangzhou citizens go to buy agricultural products around Foshan, and they are very lively when they come back. In the 1950s, the fare from Guangzhou to Foshan was 1.8, and from Guangzhou to Sanshui was 50. In the 1990s, it has been upgraded to 1 yuan and 3 yuan respectively. At that time, the train ticket was a hard paper ticket with black letters on the foundation, which was 5 cm long and 3 cm wide.

Shiweitang Station also has a revolutionary history. After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, workers started working day and night, dismantling a track from Shiweitang to Foshan, and the whole track from Foshan to Sanshui, making it impossible for the Japanese army to use this Pearl River Delta transportation artery. Re-paved after the war, the whole line resumed traffic in September 1946.