This is standard practice for many words in Japan that are phonetic representations of Western equivalents – one example being the term for ‘rush hour’ and another being the official name of the Deming Prize.
I appreciate the correction on number; I had confused it with ‘-sa’ as in ‘shibusa’.
Speaking of plagiarism, after World War II and the Chinese Civil war (1946-1950), the PRC government constructed their first Pacific 4-6-2 (Class RM) base on the design of SL 6, Class RM became Class SL’s successor after 1958. Total 258 Class RM were manufactured for passenger services. With improved engineering design, RM was 29% more powerful than SL, manage to hauling a 800 ton consists at 59mph. Not bad for a developing country.
Sadly, that first photo is not from the early 1980s, but probably from the very late 1980s or early 1990s, after the locomotive’s first restoration.
I was there in December 1985, which in my view counts as the end of the early 1980s and 751 was gleaming in fresh light blue paint, much as it looks now. Since it was out in the weather, however, it deteriorated to the stage shown in the upper photo before being restored again after the museum building was built. For most of the early 1980s it was green, as shown in the earlier photos, like 757 is now. And trust me, 757 looked much sadder than that view.
Thanks for correcting me, Peter. By the way, I found some “new old pic” on the internet via google, showing the foldable shrouding of the Streamlined SL, please take a look.
Not sure when the photo was taken, but it seems that it was under repair with some of its shrouding lifted up. Looks like a smart design. CB&Q Aeolus 4000 had the similar foldable shrouding next to the fire box, but it created a lot of noise during high speed operation, crews gave her a nickname “the tin can”.
Speaking of SL in China, have you ever heard about the 4-8-2 or 4-8-4 project of PRC proposed just before the Sino-Soviet Split? I heard from people who saw the blueprint that It looks like a class P36 (Russian: П36), they were supposed to replace SL and RM since they were not powerful enough to haul longer train. The proposal was dropped during Sino-Sov
Speaking of SL in China, have you ever heard about the 4-8-2 or 4-8-4 project of PRC proposed just before the Sino-Soviet Split? I heard from people who saw the blueprint that It looks like a class P36 (Russian: П36), they were supposed to replace SL and RM since they were not powerful enough to haul longer train. The proposal was dropped during Sino-Soviet Split. Freight engine like Class QJ and Diesels were used to haul heavy passenger consist until 70s instead.
There was a reference to the 4-8-4 in an article about the first QJ 2-10-2 in the British magazine “Railway Gazette” in 1958 which I think was written by Colonel Ken Cantlie, who was responsible for the design of the pre war 4-8-4 class KF1. Cantlie’s father was a friend of Sun Yat-Sen.
Anyway the theory was that the 4-8-4 would use the same boiler as the QJ (which was known as class “Heping” (Peace
That’s awesome, Peter! Thank you so much for your thorough reply!
There were 24 pre-war 4-8-4 (Class KF) locomotives built for the Guangzhou–Hankou Railway from 1935 to 1936, according to Wiki, Tractive effort was 43,390lbf
Cantlie’s 4-8-4 is one of the finest export locomotives ever designed, and I would have valued the ability to talk to him concerning the KF class equally with Mr. Bruce for the Milwaukee As or Paul Kiefer for the C1a or S2a.
One notable thing (which Peter can probably confirm better than I remember it) is that the KFs were given back their Roman-character abbreviations to the end, quite a commendation during the era of the Cultural Revolution.
(Note that in this brief window of time, the accepted “British” nickname for a 4-8-4 followed Canadian practice with ‘Confederation’ and that is how Cantlie’s locomotives were later known, KF as I recall being for the first two syllables in Chinese pronunciation.)
I guess I’ll have to describe my visit with Ken Cantlie…
He wrote a very small but good history of Chinese Railways published in London by The China Society in about 1980. As an appendix, he describes a trip he made to investigate Japanese preparations for the invasion of North China in the 1930s. This reads a bit like a “James Bond” novel, with Cantlie avoiding the Japanese soldiers searching the train for him by riding the locomotive.
Anyway, I rang Cantlie, quoted the names of his friends that had suggested I call and asked could I visit. He invited me for afternoon tea at 4.00 pm on the following day. I mentioned that I had just been to York where the KF1 was on display.
I turned up on time and was greeted by an elderly Chinese maid (who could have come from Central Casting, or at least appeared in “Shanghai Express”). The home was a typical London Town House, narrow with maybe four floors and a basement. I was shown to the living room on the “first floor” (second level). Cantlie shook hands and showed me to a table where he had arranged a number of things relevant to Chinese locomotives, principally the drawing of the KF1, but also, a hard covered copy of my book “Locomotives in China”. The hard cover copies were only sold by one bookshop in Australia, so I was immediately impressed.
We talked generally about a number of related topics about Chinese locomotives generally. He asked had I had any official Chinese help in preparing my book. I said no, and he smiled and said “I didn’t expect that you would have got any help”.
At this stage, he announced that afternoon tea had been served. I looked around and a dumbwaiter device had risen through a flap in the floor, with an elegant silver teapot, two cups and saucers, and a plate of cupcakes and sandwiches.
After tea we moved across to the table and examined the drawings. The loco as drawn differed from the as-built locomotive because the running boards
I admire you for having a chance to meet Mr. Cantlie, Peter.
I found a tiny picture of KF/600 series in Guangzhou–Hankou Railway livery, looks clean and sharp!
“SL 8 hauling an international express, leaving the Beijing Ternimal” (1950s)
When I first looked at this shot, I thought “I didn’t think that Chinese 22 series passenger cars were in use that early”. On closer inspection, I realised that the three passenger cars visible after the two vans were in fact through Russian cars for the Beijing Moscow service as indicated by the light coloured “patches” on the waist at the centre of the cars. These are Russian destination boards, not used on Chinese trains, indicating “Beijing-Moscow” in Russian and Chinese languages. So that really is an international train.
I tried to find a pic of a early passenger car of PRC in 50s which looks like a Pullman light weight car with lower side skirts, full width diaphragms, but I found this rare photos instead:
Series 22 Double Decker, built in 1958-61 ,with the help of engineers from Soviet Union.
I really don’t think they got much help from Russia with that design. On the other hand, that prototype could have been built to drawings straight from the German Democratic Republic, maybe from Gorlitz. Note the windows on the roof angle, a distinctive feature of cars of that type in the DDR. These windows don’t seem to have made it as far as the blue and white production cars illustrated below.
Thinking about it, the Chinese DFH series diesel hydraulic locomotives seem to owe more to the DDR than to the Soviet Union, although by the time they got to the DFH 3, they had purchsed their own big Henschel units in classes NY 5, NY 6 and NY 7. These started off using equipment like the last Southern Pacific DH units and were rated at 4000HP but the final units were at least 5400HP. I saw these in fast passenger service out of Beijing
In 1980, the through train stopped at the border with Kowloon, so we rode the KCR suburbans out to Lo Wu. My train had two Australian built EMDs 52 (a G12) and 59 (the only true G16 buit in Australia).
The train we caught from Lo Wu to Guangzhou consisted of early type 25 cars, fully air conditioned with rotating and reclining seats, and they were white with a blue window band. Power for the A/C came from a generator van behind the locomotive, which I think was a DF3, an 1800 HP Fairbanks Morse based on the Soviet TE3. These Type 25s had modern trucks with swing arm primary suspension and air bag secondary suspension, looking very much Japanese in origin, but with Chinese casting marks.
Nearly every air conditioned car since has been a 25 with some letter subscript.
I believe that you are right, Peter. Not only because you are an expert of Locomotive History of China, these Double Decker I posted on pervious post really looks almost identical to DR’s double decker wagon. But I don’t know why Soviet took the