Research On Morphological Characteristics Of Railway Heritage Landscapes Of The Trunk Chinese Eastern Railway

The Chinese Eastern Railway(CER) was built in northeastern China as a shortcut of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and it is a physical proof to the integrity of industrialization and modernization process in the early 20 th century in China, which is with highly representativeness and uniqueness in China because of being a product of cross-cultural communication and rich heritage resources. Due to the lack of basic research of CER heritage protection work, and its railway heritages is facing increasingly serious problem of natural and man-made destruction, along with the awareness of the importance of railway heritage, and taking the fever of the application for World Heritage of Cultural Routes as an opportunity, the pre-research of the conservation and reuse of trunk CER is urgent.The purpose of this study is to deeply perceive the railway heritage landscapes of the trunk Chinese Eastern Railway from a morphological point of view, and to analyse their morphological characteristics, enable full understanding of its various types of elements, in order to lay a foundation for the further evaluation, conservation and reuse of them in the future.Starting with the introduction of the construction background of CER, this paper tells us the produce and change process of CER’s heritage, then describe the overall pattern of the heritage landscape as a whole and the space distribution of the heritage landscape elements. After sorting the railway heritage landscapes, morphological analysis and research will be done on both heritage landscapes of the railway line and railway station. The study focuses on functional classification of the heritage landscapes, shape analysis which was done applying theories of morphology, and the facade outline and richness analysis which was done applying the quantitative analysis based on fractal geometry, and also the aesthetic analysis according to their morphology.This study found that the railway heritage landscape of CER arised with CER at the historic moment, and which has experienced five different periods.CER’s railway heritage landscape on the whole can be seen as the “corridor-patch-matrix” model, with the characteristics of diversity and heterogeneity, and there are relationships between the distribution of the heritage landscape elements and the railway line and also the topography. The function of railway line heritage landscape includes overall function and element function, which keep the rail system functioning well together. And there are different terms of spatial form of the distribution and the layout characteristics, heritage landscape elements have different patterns and facade form features, and also different attraction degrees. All kinds of heritage landscape forms can cause different feelings to people, shown as different aesthetic characteristics.Morphological characteristic of heritage landscapes is an important part to be considered during the heritage evaluation, and the study of whcih is a prerequisite for heritage conservation and reuse, so this study is basic for the evaluation of CER’s railway heritage landscape resources and the subsequent conservation and reuse.