Train trainees in the driver's seat as they learn the ropes

Three years ago when Souvannalath Koppy read about the opening of the China-Laos Railway he marveled at the technology.

"At the time, I thought that one day I want to stand in the driver's cabin of one of these trains and drive it," the Lao youth, now 22, said.

Koppy is now studying locomotive operations and maintenance at Kunming Railway Vocational and Technical College, and it can be only a matter of time before he sits at the controls of the real thing as it hurtles toward its next stop.