Taiwan CK5 Steam Locomotive

This locomotive was No. 5 of the Taipei Railway (Bangka–Xindian) and was built in 1942 by Honko Machinery Works. At the time of opening, the Taipei Railway owned Nos. 1 and 2. By the end of the war, it had six locomotives numbered 1 to 7, with No. 4 missing. The reason for this gap in the numbering is unknown. According to Lin Tsai-cheng's Taiwanese Private Railways within the Empire, however, the railway acquired one additional locomotive between 1926 and 1930; this may have been No. 4, and this locomotive may therefore have become No. 5. Honko Machinery Works was based in Toyama and later changed its name to Tateyama Heavy Industries. It was a manufacturer of small locomotives for private railways and industrial use. This locomotive was built during wartime, when standardization and simplification of locomotives were being promoted in response to shortages of transport capacity and materials. For that reason, No. 5 was probably built as a standardized wartime small locomotive of the 1,067 mm gauge, 20-ton class. After the war, the Taipei Railway Co., Ltd. became the Taipei Railway Company and was then purchased by the Taiwan Railway Administration in 1949; this locomotive was also renumbered CK5. Since no photographs or drawings have been found, the illustration on this page was created based on contemporary standardized small locomotives built by Honko Machinery Works.