Adventures of Katt and Vince: Trans-Siberian Adventure part 2 -- Changing the Bogies and Entering China

As promised, here is the rest of our Trans-Siberian adventure:

At nearly midnight on Day Five we crossed the border from Mongolia to China. At Erlian, the Chinese border, after our passports were stamped, the train went into the bogie changing shed, an absolutely massive building with three tracks running through it. The first few cars, including us (car 10) pulled into the middle track, and then the rest of the train behind us disappeared and reappeared on our right side.

inside the bogie-changing shed

The back of the bogie-changing shed; another train is coming

The jacks and the jack operator

We got to watch out the window as our car was rolled back and forth about a hundred times, then positioned over the massive steel feet of the jacks. The Chinese workers disengaged the bogies under us, and then the jacks slowly lifted our car about a meter. The workers rolled out the old bogies and rolled in new bogies, then lowered our car.

We wanted to watch what was going on with the rest of the train, so we went to the back door of Car 10, where our very kind conductor actually opened all three doors so we could have a perfect view as the crew lifted, changed the wheels, and lowered the other cars on the track next to us!

The whole procedure took over two hours, and then we sat in the station at Erlian for another two hours to keep to our schedule. If you want to see the entire bogie-change in super-fast speed, check out our video on YouTube: