Imperial Railways of Northern China

Often described as China’s first railway, the first standard gauge railway to be built and survive in China was the Kaiping (開平) colliery tramway located at Tongshan in Hebei province. This was not, however, truly the first railway in China. An earlier attempt to introduce railways had been made in 1876 when the short Shanghai to Wusong narrow gauge line known as the "Woosung Road Company" was built but then pulled up within less than two years because of Chinese government opposition.

Cantonese merchant Tong King-sing (唐景星 a.k.a. Tang Ting-shu 唐廷樞)was a Hong Kong Government interpreter who later became Jardine Matheson & Company’s head comprador at Shanghai. In 1878 Tong, who was then Director-General of the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company, commenced coal mining operations in the Kaiping district with the backing of the powerful Viceroy of Zhili Li Hongzhang.

The first shaft was sunk at Tongshan in 1879 by the new Chinese Engineering and Mining Company (CEMC) under the direction of English mining engineer Robert Reginald Burnett, MICE. To transport coal from the mine to ships on the river at Beitang entailed carrying it a distance of nearly 30 miles and Tong King Sing attempted but was unable to gain permission to build a railway for this purpose.

Initially a canal was constructed from Lutai on the river to Hsukochuang which was the point beyond which the canal could not physically run. The Managing Director, Tong eventually received permission for the last seven miles to the Tongshan colliery to be covered by a mule-pulled “tramway” and English civil engineer Claude William Kinder was employed and given responsibility for its construction, which was completed in 1881.

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