Tiantongyuan North Station

In Spring of 2015 I also briefly visited Beijing, primarily to visit the China Aviation Museum at Datangshan, somewhere outside of the north side sixth ring road of Beijing.  To get there I used Beijing Subway line 5 to it's northern extremity at Tiantongyuan North station.  There were a few things going on I thought worthy of mention....

It's busy in the morning rush hour on line 5!  As is increasingly common around the world, there was a heavy demand to suburban centres as well as the centre of Beijing.

All Beijing Subway trains have electronic current location/next stop indicators above each door way.

Tiantongyuan North station is by a bus station and bustling urban centre.  The entry in to the station in the peaks is controlled by a queuing system, set up around c. 8 foot tall metal barriers.

And if you hadn't seen the picture above, at first sight you'd think this is an abattoir or somesuch!

There are cursory x-rays of all baggage entering Beijing Subway.  This has been in place since at least pre-2008 Olympics.  Tiantongyuan North us set up with six baggage scanners, akin to a medium sized airport!

Quick overview of the platform, as is common on the modern metros of the Far East there are platform edge doors.

If you ever want to go to China Aviation Museum this is the bus, the 643.  A print out of the name in Chinese helped with my communications with the plentiful customer service staff on the bus station and the conductor on the bus (every Beijing bus has a conductor).

Grey and maroon buses were bought for the 2008 Olympics shuttle buses.  Being Chinese, they are now operating in various states of disrepair around the city.

And a few shots from the Museum why not?

It is good that the bus had a helpful conductor on board as I'd never have looked up this road and thought there's one of the world's largest aviation museums at the end of it!

An assortment of Soviet era helicopters.

1950s MiGs as far as the eye can see!

Antonov 12. Beautiful!