Trainman in Vietnam
Posted: 07 Mar 2012, 10:55
Photos and captions by Nathan Berelowitz, February 2012
John M wrote:Hi Nathan
Thanks for the photos, interesting, I never got to Saigon - only Hanoi. I don't know if you ever play around with PHOTOSHOP but its now quite easy to remove haze from photos. I did a very quick (2 minute) fiddle with one of your shots, the result is attached - this was only a 70 kb file so not much detail - you could bring up more contrast with the hi-res original.
These typically French locos are actually Chinese (!!) so quite interesting and their origin was a mystery until relatively recently. After WW 2 the French (SACM) built a series of 2-8-2 and 4-6-2 for their Colonies in the 1950-53 period, about 40-50 of each. It gets complicated because they were delivered piecemeal to railways like the Congo-Ocean in Congo, the Dakar- Niger (Senegal) and Abidjan - Niger (Ivory Coast) as well as Vietnam. We actually don't know how many went to Vietnam but at some point only 10 were left and were renumbered 141.101-10 (they were originally in the 5xx series).
Two were then built in Vietnam Railways Hanoi Works in 1961-62 and were 141.121-122, these probably used parts and spares from scrapped locos.
The ones that survive today like 141.158 in Saigon are not that old as they were blatant rip-offs of the SACM design built in China in 1965-1969 by Tangshan Works as their SY2 Class (although there were no others built - just the ones for Vietnam), Tangshan built 66 of these 141.151-216. I saw them working in 1995 and even had a footplate ride on one, I'll have to scan a couple of photos and send them through.
So in conclusion, Chinese rip-offs have been around quite a while !
Cheers
John