Meiji era Steam Locomotives

[SL58654号]

In the period preceding Japan's growth into a self-sufficient industrialized powerhouse, their emergent railways imported a plethora of locomotives from Britain, America, Germany, Switzerland, and a very few from Belgium in their early days. The variety and antiquity of these engines would've made Japan a paradise for rail fans had these generally survived longer into the period when travel and color photography became more accessible. I especially like these 'Okajoki', (陸蒸気) as they are colloquially called today, for their English-type buffers and screw couplings applied to them, particularly on British and American locomotives built for Japanese rails.
Baldwin locomotives, like this Sanyo Railway Class 10 (950) 2-4-2T, were really quite handsome for, as I like to call it, their 'Anglicized-American' look to them for their buffers, lack of a bell and cowcatcher, and marker-type lamps placed on them instead of a huge headlight. Note the similarities to Lyn, another Baldwin locomotive built for an English narrow gauge railway. Which non-Japanese built steam locomotives do you like? 
 

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/locomotive/images/e/e5/BLW41_Sanyo_10.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20230426025240

 

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BaldwinLocomotiveLyn.jpg

 

 

 

[Yavaris Forge]

My personal favourites are the 4100 class and the 8800 class, both were built in Germany by Maffei and Berliner Maschinenbau AG, respectively. I really like the somewhat prussian influence they both have, with the 4100 resembling the Prussian T16 type (later DRG class 94) and the 8800 being a somewhat scaled down version of the P8 (later DRG class 38). The 8800 also was the first Japanese imported locomotive to feature superheated steam.

4100 class:

 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Joseph_Anton_von_Maffei_06.jpg/1920px-Joseph_Anton_von_Maffei_06.jpg

 

8800 class:

https://tanken.com/steamlocomotive/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/8800.jpg

 

I'm still waiting on a model of the 4100 in n gauge, but my expectations are low that someone will make one.

[ED75-775]

I've kind of got a soft spot for early railway locomotives, particularly from the 1860s onwards as that's when rail here in New Zealand started to take off.

 

After seeing @Yavaris Forge's comment earlier at work, I decided to browse the Toyoyasu N gauge website and see what I could find. So far, no-one has attempted the 4100 class but the slightly later 4110 class 0-10-0T has been produced by both Micro Ace and an independent manufacturer called Train Shop. No-one has produced a ready-to-run 8800 class either, but Toyoyasu 3D printed his own which runs on a Kato C50 chassis.

 

My instinct is that if any manufacturer did pick them up, it would likely be World Kogei which comes with a decent price tag, or possibly Micro Ace who are known for liking niche prototypes. But we could be surprised one day!

[ATShinkansen]

I like the 7100s.  To the untrained eye, they could easily be mistaken for Colorado narrow gauge power.

 

I think Atlas made a Mogul many years ago that could easily be modified into a 7100.

Edited August 18, 2023 by ATShinkansen

[SL-san]

14 hours ago, ATShinkansen said:

I like the 7100s.  To the untrained eye, they could easily be mistaken for Colorado narrow gauge power.

 

I think Atlas made a Mogul many years ago that could easily be modified into a 7100.

Microace made models of 7100 type "Yoshitsune" (A0290) and "Benkei" (A0291) in 2002 but because of the motor size they were somewhat over scale and were reputedly not particularly good performers with a heavy load.  Second-hand models very occasionally appear on Yahoo Japan auctions at increased (inflated) prices.

Graeme