There are more than a few steam locomotives sitting in parks across Japan, enjoying their retirement.

I wanted to acknowledge the ones I happen across for all their hard work, so I started the Static Life Steam Locomotives Project, SLSL for short.

^{_{A map of the Static Life Steam Locomotives & more about the project is here.}}

No. 9608 was built by Kawasaki in 1913 for the Imperial Government Railways (IGR). This class was the first domestically built freight locomotive and we’ve met one of them before, although quite some ways away from Ome Railway Park – all the way down in Kyushu, in the Kumamoto City Museum grounds.

I can’t really add much more to what I said in that post, but I’ll happily review some of the more interesting bits from it; namely, that these ended up being hte longest serving class of loco in Japan – the last one didn’t retire until 1976.

They are, in fact, the longest serving locomotives in Japan – the last of them didn’t retire until 1976.

A couple of modified versions of these are on display in the China Railway Museum in Beijing, as a result of having been shipped overseas during the Japanese Imperialist expansion period, leading up to World War II. They were just left there and then ended up being converted by the Chinese railway.

Here’s a breakdown of the details about this train, taken from the appendix to Steam Locomotives of Japan, Naotaka Hirota: Kodansha International (1972).

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TYPE 9600 (2-8-0 tender locomotive)

CYLINDER: 508 x 610mm
BOILER PRESSURE: 13.0kg/cm²
FIRE GRATE AREA: 2.32m²
TOTAL HEATING SURFACE: 154.5m²
– SUPER HEATING SURFACE: 35.2m²
– EVAPORATIVE HEATING SURFACE: 119.3m²
– HEATING SURFACE OF SMOKE TUBES: 108.4m²
– HEATING SURFACE OF FIRE BOX: 10m²
– HEATING SURFACE OF ARCH TUBES: 0.9m²
BOILER CAPACITY: 5.2m³
LARGE SMOKE TUBES (diameter x length x number) 133 x 4039 mm x 22
SMALL SMOKE TUBES (diameter x length x number) 51 x 4039 mm x 126
WEIGHT OF ENGINE (in working order) 60.53t
WEIGHT OF ENGINE (empty) 54.83t
ADHESIVE WEIGHT OF ENGINE (in working order) 52.73t
WEIGHT OF TENDER (in working order) 34.50t
WEIGHT OF TENDER (empty) 15.50t
WATER CAPACITY : 13m³
FUEL CAPACITY : 6.00t
VALVE GEAR : Walschaert’s
INTRODUCED : 1913

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You can visit 9600 by going here.