Kaiping Tramway and Imperial Railways of North China
The first 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge railway to be built and survive in China was the Kaiping (開平) colliery tramway located at Tangshan in Hebei province.
An earlier attempt to introduce railways had been made in 1876 when the short Shanghai to Wusong narrow gauge line known as the "Woosung Road Company"[1] was built but then pulled up within less than two years because of Chinese government opposition.
In 1878 Tong, who was then Director-General of the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company, commenced coal mining operations in the Kaiping district with the backing of the powerful Viceroy of Zhili Li Hongzhang.
[6] To transport coal from the mine to ships on the river at Beitang entailed carrying it a distance of nearly 30 miles; Tong King Sing attempted to gain permission to build a railway for this purpose, but was not able .
The CEMC's Managing Director, Tong, eventually received permission for the last seven miles to the Tongshan colliery to be covered by a mule-pulled “tramway”, and English civil engineer Claude William Kinder[8] was employed for its construction, which was completed in 1881.
The result of Kinder's efforts came to fruition on 9 June 1881 when the home-made 2-4-0 tank engine christened “Rocket of China” entered service on the tramway.
[16] At various times there were organized riots against the railway and in one instance thousands of dollars worth of damage was done to mining equipment at the Tongshan colliery when a violent feud erupted between Cantonese and northern Chinese workers.
[18][19] Further troubles came weeks later, in April 1888, when a newly completed steel bridge across the Pei Ho river (today's Haihe 海河) in the heart of Tientsin, connecting with the foreign settlements, caused unrest with local boatmen fearful that the railway would harm their interests.
[20] Shortly after the completion of the Tientsin section pressure was exerted for permission to build extensions westwards to Beijing and northeastwards towards the Great Wall.
[24] Plans to continue the railway North-eastwards beyond Shan Hai Kuan (Shanhaiguan) to Jinzhou, Shenyang and Jilin were prevented by lack of funds and because of war between Japan and China (August 1894 to March 1895).
After a short power struggle between rival factions Sheng Hsuan Huai (pinyin: Sheng Xuanhuai succeeded in gaining control of this new organization and appointed his own supporters to the directorate of whom the most prominent of these was Hu Yu-fen[25] who was appointed Director-General and made responsible for the all sections of the “Northern” Railway and the name evolved yet again in 1897 into “Imperial Railways of North China”[16][26][27][28][29] During the period 1898-9 a British loan of £2,300,000 was negotiated and an issue of bonds raised in London for the purpose of extending this line northwards to Xinmin and a branch line from Koupangtzu[30] to Yingkou.
Back at the western end of the railway the line had reached Fengtai and shortly afterwards a new Ma Chia Pu[31] terminus outside Peking in 1897 from where a Siemens built electric tramway was laid to the city's South Gate, or Yongdingmen, which opened for service in 1899.
This included the killing of the railway's recently appointed new Managing-Director, Hsu Ching Cheng (pinyin: Xu Jingcheng 許景澄) who was dragged out of his office and executed by pro-Boxer Court hardliners for being “too pro foreign”.
[27] Hsu had replaced the previous Director, Hu Yu-fen in early 1899 after a palace coup in late 1898 which saw the Empress Dowager Cixi suppress the reformist young Guangxu Emperor and grab power back into her own hands.
[34] After civilian control of the railway was resumed in late 1902, Claude Kinder was reinstated as Chief Engineer and also given additional and more powerful responsibilities as General Manager.
[16][35] During the spring of 1903 construction on the Manchurian extension resumed and by the autumn had reached Hsin Min Tung (Xinming) which initially served as the IRNC's northern terminus for Mukden (Shenyang).
During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 the Japanese laid a military narrow gauge line from Hsin Min Tung to Mukden in their bid to oust the Russians.
Kinder worked for the Chinese railway for 31 years as Engineer-in-Chief and also later General Manager of the progressively developing IRNC before resigning in May 1909 following a difference of opinion with a new Director-General.
