Mysterious 460 supplied to Indochina Railways by Mitsui in 1916

Classic Trains General Discussion
1

Hi,

We are a small group of expats living in Vietnam and are working on a website about the history of the railways of Indochina & Vietnam and are of course struggling with incomplete locomotive rosters and general lack of documentation not to mention actual "specimens"etc. etc.

One of the mysteries is a meter gauge (very light) 460 locomotive (3 pcs ) that were supplied to CF Indochine by Mitsui company in 1916.

(None of the locomotives survived and so far no photo found. )

460 by Mitsui to CFI in 1916

on Flickr

2

J.D.H.Smith doesn’t even mention a class 230.100. It might be interesting to compare numbers with the Fives-Lille 230.001 which are footnoted as being similar to Indonesian locomotives.

What are the references for Japanese-sourced Brazilian steam in that era?

3

Well, there are a few fringe locos that J.D.H.Smith didn’t mention on CFI.

This one was not a big player with only three on the roster.

Fives-Lilles was almost twice the weight .

I managed to drop out the “Baldwin” name earlier:

There were a lot similarish 460s sold to different Brazilian railways by Baldwin in those times, so maybe this one could be related ?

So I am looking for Baldwin delivery list data for Mitsui for 1916 or a bit earlier.

1916 was in the middle of WW1 in Europe, so European suppliers are pretty unlikely , German suppliers were on the wrong side of the front and French would not us

4

I’m pretty sure Mitsui, rapidly growing to become Japan’s largest zaibatsu, would not have ordered locomotives from Baldwin to re-ship to Indochina – but Mitsubishi was founded as a ‘trading’ house and I believe was primarily in that line and not heavy construction until fairly late.

The combine was broken up during the Allied occupation of Japan but it’s possible that records of the transaction exist. If those are located it could probably be determined if the locomotives were either sourced from Baldwin for resale or assembled ‘under license’ with either Baldwin erecting plans or the aid of Baldwin parts.

5

So Mitsui was only involved in trading Alco locomotives strictly for Japan only despite having offices all over Asia including Indochina ?

https://ngdiscussion.net/phorum/file.php?1,file=77001,in_body_attachment=1

SHOP

YEAR

TYPE

FIRST OWNER

ROAD #

SECOND OWNER

37563

Rog

1907

4-4-0

Mitsui & Co.

50

South Manchurian Railway