Woosung Road Company
| Locale | Shanghai, China |
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| Dates of operation | 1876–1877 |
| Predecessor | None |
| Successor | Songhu Railway |
| Track gauge | 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) |
| Length | 9 ¼ mi (14 km) |
| Woosung Road | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Track gauge: | 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Stations and structures | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Woosung Road or Railway was a 19th-century, 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) narrow gauge passenger railway in Shanghai, China, between the outskirts of the American Concession in the modern town's Zhabei District and Wusong in Baoshan District. Surreptitiously conceived and constructed, it ran for less than a year before it was purchased and dismantled by the Qing viceroy Shen Pao-chen. The line would not be rebuilt for twenty years. This fate was a commonly invoked symbol of the Qing dynasty's backwardness and insularity, despite the road's admitted illegality and numerous legitimate objections voiced by the Chinese during its construction and operation.
Its route – still primarily rural as late as the turn of the century – now forms part of the Shanghai Metro's elevated Line 3.
Following the success of the first British railroads and the concessions to foreign traders following the 1842 Treaty of Nanking ending the First Opium War, European and American diplomats and merchants began to advocate for the development of railroads within China. The British firm Jardine, Matheson, & Company in particular started to champion rail connections from the interior to Canton, Shanghai, and Tianjin as early as 1845.MacDonald Stephenson, the engineer responsible for the East Indian Railway, attempted to interest the imperial government in rail links from Hong Kong and Shanghai to Calcutta through Hankow and Yunnan in 1859 and again in 1864. These proposals were rejected even by the foreign-led Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce, which thought it might impact established shipping. A request of 20 July 1863 by 27 firms for a Shanghai-to-Suzhou line was similarly rejected by the governor of Jiangsu Li Hongzhang and in 1865 by the Shanghai taotai Ying Pao-shih, who composed an influential treatise, "The 7 Nos", on the occasion.
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