Japanese steam locomotives sent abroad in World War 2

[Fenway Park]

Hi,

 

The latest edition of Continental Modeller includes an article on Malaya and Singapore following the end of World War 2. Among the locos shown are several sent over from what was the Dutch East Indies reguaged to metre from 1067mm but of more interest is the photo of C58 55 at Singapore in 1946. I knew the Japanese sent over locos to China 9600 Burma Railway C56 and C51s to China as well. This is the first time I have seen that C58s were sent abroad.

Does anyone know of other classes their destinations and the numbers involved?

 

Thanks

 

Malcolm

[bikkuri bahn]

I think you need to be more specific- are you referring to locomotives formerly used in Japan but sent to occupied areas such as in SE Asia, or are you including areas under Japanese colonial administration (Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria), as those areas had considerable rosters of Japanese built locomotives, purposely built for the railway administrations there (1067mm for Taiwan, and 1435mm for the other two areas).

[Fenway Park]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I was excluding those areas where Japan had influence over many years. In WW2 they gained the former colonies from Britain and The Netherlands and their raw materials.

 

As the railways had to handle extra traffic the existing locomotive fleets were in poor condition or not up to meeting traffic demands, locomotives and other items were sent from Japan to these new areas.

 

The details that I can find are limited although years ago there was a web site that gave all the allocations of steam locomotives up to and after WW2 and there gaps in the information which accounted for the war years. I know the C56 class were the locos on the Death Railway and one has returned to Japan and is on the Oigawa Railway.

 

I was surprised to see the C58 class being sent to Malaya and being reguaged when they were a new locomotive class back in Japan. The existing fleet was in Malaya was very British and was this and the Japanese poor opinion of the inherited fleet or their inability to work the locos properly the reason for the imports?

 

After the war Japanese locos were sent to Thailand as reparations as well as Jordan.

 

Malcolm

[marknewton]

Malcolm, there were C58s sent to Thailand during WW2 as well. R. Ramaer's recent book "The Railways Of Thailand" states that post-WW2 there were four C58s running on the RSR, numbered 761-764. They were originally C5852, C5854, C58130 and C58136, built by Kawasaki and Kisha Seizo Kaisha in 1938/39. They were withdrawn and scrapped in the early 1950s. Ramaer notes that the reason for this was that their axleload of 13 tons was too great for the RSR track.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Railways-Thailand-R-Ramaer/dp/9744801514

 

C58s do seem an odd choice, particularly for use on a line as roughly built as the "Death Railway".

 

All the best,

 

Mark.