Gia Lam Railway Factory is an important railway project built by the French in Vietnam in the early 20th century. It was originally built as a mechanical warehouse where locomotives were maintained and repaired.
In 1970, the factory was rebuilt with funds provided by the Polish government to Vietnam. The infrastructure system and workshops were invested synchronously, designed according to the characteristics of the railway to meet the maximum capacity of building nearly 1,200 new carriages, repairing more than 120 locomotives and 600 carriages/year.
A specially designed locomotive and wagon repair and building workshop with a roof that lets in light; along with an overhead crane system that can lift hundreds of tons.
Over the past two centuries, the factory has seen many ups and downs. During its heyday, it employed thousands of workers and was considered a source of pride to be there.
Train wheel details await completion at a workshop.
Connecting the workshops in the factory is a rail system of both 1.435m and 1m gauge and a roller bridge. The locomotive and wagon will be pulled from the workshop onto the roller bridge, then the roller bridge is controlled to the correct rail position to bring the locomotive and wagon into the workshop to be pulled over.
Workshop area for finishing train car bodies.
The factory campus is more than 20.3 hectares wide, including nearly 5km of railway leading to the factories, connecting directly to Gia Lam station and joining the national railway system, 6 production workshops and operating buildings, material warehouses, rest houses, industrial wastewater treatment system, 10 power stations, internal roads, large regulating lake combined with fire fighting service, green campus, sports field...
Currently, Gia Lam Railway Factory has become the highlight of the Hanoi Creative Design Festival 2023 with the factory and locomotives becoming an art space for exhibitions and displays... attracting a large number of visitors.
Steam locomotive numbered 141-179 (Tu Luc locomotive) is one of three steam locomotives of the Mikado series that were researched, designed and manufactured by engineers of Gia Lam Railway Factory since 1964, with the support of Chinese locomotive engineers. This type of locomotive is designed to run on 1,000mm gauge rails. The total number of locomotives of this type produced is about 50, mainly used to transport goods in the North.
Visitors tour the factory area inside.
A water tower dozens of meters high was built in 1977-1978 inside the Gia Lam Railway Factory. Well water will be pumped to the upper tank, then distributed to serve the factory's production and the daily life of people in the area.
During construction, the water reservoir was precast and then gradually hoisted up and placed on the tower using a hand winch. The slogans are still clearly printed on the bottom of the water reservoir even after decades.
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