Purchased in Shangri-La/Zhongdian long distance bus station. The driver kicked everyone off the bus as soon as he arrived in Panzhihua (around 4am) instead of letting everyone sleep like normally happens in Yunnan. Everyone then had to wait around for the transportation to start between the bus station and the train station.

The train station is pretty far away from the panzhihua bus station -- panzhihua seems to be centered in a kind of fork in the river, and spreads out along all three forks. There is a public bus into town, but the distance is long, so it costs 3 yuan per person.

It's also not easy to get a train ticket on short notice in Panzhihua heading for Chengdu so all in all, it might be more convenient and pleasant to take a bus all the way down to Kunming to take an overnight train to Chengdu, even though it's much further to do that.