Good pictures of the Schantung Railway Company are rare. So I was all the more pleased to see this picture of No. 1 of the Schantung Railway Company, built by Humboldt in 1900 with factory number 55. The machine corresponds to the Prussian T3, just as all the first deliveries in 1900 were borrowed from Prussian designs. In addition to the four T3s, six T9.1s were also delivered. The second picture shows such a machine, number 17, delivered by Borsig in 1900 with the factory number 4810. The 2’C universal locomotives for mainline operation procured in 1901 were already an independent design, although they were based on other designs from the German locomotive industry for overseas use. The third picture shows No. 73, the last of a total of 23 machines built by Vulcan, Hartmann and BMAG. The 73 was delivered by BMAG in 1910 with the factory number 4597. Finally, a fourth picture of one of the express locomotives procured by BMAG in 1913/14, which were intended to take over fast passenger services. These carried the road numbers 301-306.

The picture was taken by a French-speaking photographer or traveler whose pictures were taken with a stereo camera. As all the glass plates have consecutive numbers, the route of the journey can be easily traced – although I have only traced it for the beginning and the Shanghai-Tsingtau branch in view of the approx. 500 glass plates. As the steamship timetables have been handed down, it would probably be possible to determine the exact date of the photograph by putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. Unfortunately, this photograph is the only one from the Schantung Railway Company in the collection.

As the caption explains, the journey began in San Francisco on the “SS Mongolia” in December 1908 and initially led to Shanghai. At least I have not found any pictures of Hong Kong, the actual destination of the “SS Mongolia”. From Shanghai, the “Staatssekretär Kraetke” sailed to Tsingtau in January 1909, a stone’s throw away, departing at 15:00 in the afternoon and arriving in Tsingtau in the morning of the day after next. The photo was taken on arrival on board the ship, as the roof section of the steamer deck visible on the right-hand stereo image shows. I took the liberty of digitally modifying the shot so that the areas missing on the left and right of the square stereo shots were added together to create an overall image. Including the removal of the steamer roof. Otherwise I would have had to do without either the Chinese man pulling the cart on the left or the rear end of the train.

The lady’s fur coat proves that it must have been a cold morning. The freight wagons also deserve attention, as they are different from the other types, which are also based on the Prussian freight wagons of the Union type.

The picture with the T9.1 shows a freight train arriving in Tsingtau from Kiautschou. As the picture was also distributed as a postcard by “Verlag Max Grill, Kaufhaus, Tsingtau” and it still has an undivided back, the date of the picture is between 1900 and 1905, i.e. the early days of the Schantung Railway Company.

If it were not for the people and the buildings on the left of the picture, which differ somewhat from European designs, the picture could have been taken somewhere in Prussia. Both the locomotive and the carriages make a thoroughly Prussian impression. And the cowcatcher originally fitted to the locomotives by Borsig obviously did not survive the first years of operation. It can only be seen on the buffer beam of the locomotive in the pictures of the inaugural train.

The picture of number 73 was taken after the end of the Japanese-British siege in the spring of 1915. Many of the bridges on the railroad had been destroyed and so the machine is standing here on a provisionally repaired bridge. Many “Prussian” design features can be seen on the engine, although this type was never built for the Royal Prussian Railway Administration. As universal locomotives, these engines carried the main load of traffic on the 412 km route from Tsingtau (now Qingdao) to Tsinanfu (now Jinan), a journey that took almost 13 hours with the mixed trains.

In this photo we see one of the passenger locomotives with the express train arriving in Tsingtau from Tsinanfu. The date of the photo can be narrowed down very precisely, as the locomotive is following one of the two 4-axle PwPost4ü mail-packing wagons delivered by the Dessau wagon factory in 1914, which were originally intended for through mail traffic between Berlin and Tsingtau. Accordingly, they had interchangeable bogies for 1435 mm and the Russian 1524 mm gauge. They also had a combination of screw couplers and Chinese Janney couplers in order to be able to run on the Chinese parts of the line from Tsinanfu. Since the siege of Tsingtau began on September 13, 1914, the photo can only have been taken between late spring 1914 and September 12, 1914, given the leafy trees. Perhaps even August 1, the day the German Empire declared war on Russia. The planned Berlin-Tsingtau runs never took place, but the wagons were probably in service as far as Peking. They bore the road numbers Cdb 121, 122.

The following information can be found for these wagons in the manufacturer’s description of the Dessau wagon factory: Length 20.5 m, tare weight 30 t, load weight 12 t, 1 luggage compartment, 1 German and 1 Chinese mail compartment with side aisle, 1 service compartment for the train crew, 1 lavatory, 1 vestibule at each end of the wagon, frame of the wagon iron sections, natural varnished Burmese teak on the outside, pine paneling on the inside. Steam heating, Westinghouse brake, kerosene lighting.

In addition to the use of pure passenger locomotives, the development of the railroad was also reflected in the order for eight 1’E freight locomotives placed shortly before the start of the war, which was canceled due to the war and the loss of the railroad to Japan and was never completed. Instead, American 2-8-0 ALCO locomotives later ran there.