Background history, quote from wiki: "the Asia Express (Japanese: あじあ号, translit. Ajia-gō, simplified Chinese:
One of the reason I started this post was because I found quite a lot of railfan in Japan brag and boast about this train a lot, I have seen a tweet, probably written by someone who know nothing about train outside Japan, saying that this is the “fastest train” at the time, more advanced than US and Europe blah blah blah, a lot of “hometown proud” stuff. So I dig deeper on its historical background and found some suspicious thing. It is just a sharing post, don’t expect too much.[swg]
(The consist)
Another example: South Manchuria Railway ダブサ500, this one is too obvious.
It should probably be noted that top speed for this class of locomotive was 75mph, with peak speed of the train being given as about 83mph and average speed (with a restricted number of stops on what is probably a comparatively unrestricted line) only slightly above 50mph, which is well below anything using ‘streamlining’ scientifically in the West in that era, but of course well above anything domestic Japan could provide, then or later, before the advent of Old Man Thunder’s completely new railroads.
The South Manchuria company (abbreviated ‘Mantetsu’) is an interesting thing to examine. Here’s the route (the extension to Harbin coming after the sort of heroic regauging effort we periodically saw in the United States in the era of gauge consolidation, from Russian to standard, in 1935):
A bit more somberly, the company and the train were associated with the Manchukuo puppet state, and I have to wonder if at least some of the enthusiasm for it on the part of Japanese railfans represents nostalgia for the failed co-prosperity sphere for which it was a flagship into 1943. Considering how advanced the railroad was said to be, as early as 1913, by a knowledgeable and ‘neutral’ railroad source, I would leave the politics out of assessing the value of the train just as we do for, say, the Henschel-Wegmann-Zug.
I do think the claim made for this being the ‘first’ production lightweight sealed-window-air-conditioned train could be substantiated. Absent seeing the detail design of the three-axle trucks (which probably provided stable riding on low-axle-load tolerant track) I cannot say whether these trains actually bore out any kind of high-speed promise; they are certainly nothing like either the engineering or the outcome provided by, say, Nystrom on Milwaukee in this era, or the strange 'throw en
クリップ追加
https://i.imgur.com/agG1wwH.jpg
The last page for some reason I can only link.
While the SL7 (Chinese class) was definitely built first, we don’t know whether the subsequent design of the “Mercury” engines copied the design or produced it independently.
My own book “Locomotives in China” (1984) gives a reasonable background to locomotive development on the SMR but the material on Wikipedia now gives much more detail, although some points on the web may be incorrect or at least misinterpreted.
I think the two streamlined Pacifics are in Shenyang. I’v
Thank you very much for the thorough reply, Overmod, you enriched the content of this post a lot!
Speaking of average speed, the “race track” between Chicago, Illinois to Crestline, (here we go again [:P]) Ohio
“The ‘dabusa’ (meaning double-ended; the Japanese word for tank engines) 500 and 501 deserve more attention than you’re giving them.”
Clearly you haven’t read my 1984 book, “Locomotives in China” specifically not page 5 “Classification of Chinese locomotives”.
The South Manchurian Railway was, in its early days, partly funded by Harriman interests and as a result they adopted an abbreviation of the USA locomotive type names to describe locomotive types with numerical suffixes to separate classes, much as the Southern Pacific did.
2-6-4 tank locomotives (of which a number were obtained by the SMR from Alco) were called “Double Enders” which was abbreviated in the Japanese Katakana script as “Da Bu”. The Alcos became Da Bu I and later Japanese locomotives became Da Bu Ni (I for one, Ni for two). When the 4-4-4Ts arrived, rather than give them a new class they became Da Bu Sa, (where Sa = 3).
The Katakana script is used to phonetically represent foreign words in Japanese.
The Chinese couldn’t put up with this classification and selected the class “Reading”, a type name drived from Reading tender locomotives which were soon converted to 4-4-2 with twelve inches cut off the length of the fireboxes.
This was transliterated as LD in the Chinese Pinyin Roman script (there was a script form of Pinyin used during the Kuomintang and early Communist eras) but there was not a Katakana version.
There is an excellent HO scale model of the LD1, available in purple and yellow SMR colours, and imaginary Chinese blue and military camouflage colours. My model is in the SMR scheme.
I understood that these locomotives were intended to work a connecting service from the “Asia” between Shenyang and the coal mining town of Fushun. and wouldn’t have needed to be fast nor to have a long range.
The only photo I’ve seen of a 4-4-4T on a train showed it
Thank you Miningman and Peter for joining the discussion![tup]
The similarity of them reminds me of the case of NYC #5344 Commodore Vanderbilt and Soviet Class IS20-16 , PRR S1 and Soviet 2-3-2V!
This is a pic of JNR Class C55 Streamlined. The Design of the shrouding demonstrated the industrial aesthetic of Japan in 1930s.
I bet they served as switcher until 70s. Those much bigger Streamlined Pacific were also seen as war trophy, some of them towed international trains (Beijing to Moscow or Pyongyang) by the PRC government, some served between Beijing and Shenyang. Ironically, when PRC and Japan agreed to reestablish diplomatic relations in 1973, SL 751 and 757 played some roles for public diplomacy between people, especially railfan, from China and Japan. Actually, both of them are still playing this role.
(SL 751 in PRC, 1980s)
I don’t think that the 4-4-4Ts lasted as long as the SL7…
There are no reported sightings of the LD1 from any of the early railfan visits to China. There was an official list of locomotives dated in the early 1970s that listed LD1 as one of the classes that had been removed from service.
The photo of 751 looks like the locomotive as it was first restored to operation by the workshops at Sujiatun. Certainly I have slides from 1981 (not my own) showing it in that condition in steam for a visting railfan group.
757, which I saw in 1985 was basically the colour of rust and I was not sure that it would be preserved. I don’t think 757 was ever restored to working order.
Peter
The Pashina 981 was built long after the others and it was said to be based on the Milwaukee F-7s. It was the only locomotive with that shrouding.
The later Pashiha locomotives, with 1850 mm driving wheels rather than 2000mm, had a streamlined casing reminiscent of the PRR K4 3768. I’ve seen photos of these departing Beijing on express trains, but I’ve never seen a photo of a Pashina operating for the chinese Railways.
Peter
Thank you for providing more informations about the trains, Peter.
IIRC, SL8 4-6-2 was the engine which had a streamlined casing reminiscent of the PRR Streamlined K4s? Not many pic I could find, here is one of them from wiki:
Preseved in Shenyang Railway Exhibition Hall
“SL 8 hauling an international express, leaving the Beijing Ternimal” (1950s)
This is 751 in early 80s, not many people expected that these massive pacific would be well preserved by the Local government of PRC at that time. Time flies and things changed a lot…
30 years later…
