South Manchurian Railway Pashina class

After Nobutarō Yoshino had already brought his experiences from ALCO in the design of the Pashiko, he designed the Pashina as his true masterpiece. As the name suggests, it was again a Pacific that was particularly heavy in this case. It was one of the first steam locomotives with a complete streamlined cladding and was painted in Prussian blue. This brought it the name “black mackerel”.

Analogous to the practices in the USA, the locomotives had a boiler with a large grate and a combustion chamber, a mechanical stoker and a feedwater heater. At the Mantetsu they were also the first locomotives with a superheater after Schmidt patent. They reached a top speed of 140 km/h and were also able to pull heavy express trains at 135 km/h.

The service area of the Pashina was the prestigious Asia Limited, which ran between Dalian and Harbin. The Japanese occupying powers used the train for propaganda purposes to demonstrate the superiority of Japanese culture to the population of Manchuria. So the train and the locomotive in particular were found on stamps, postcards and even in school books.

Three locomotives were created in the Mantetetsu workshops in Shahekou and eight others at Kawasaki. A twelfth one was created again at Kawasaki in 1936, whereby an optimized form of streamlined cladding was developed in the wind tunnel of the aircraft manufacturer Kawanishi.

The Asia Limited was discontinued in 1943 due to the war and the locomotives were now used for conventional express trains. From 1949 they were used by China Railway and were called SL7 from 1959. The streamlining was partially removed to simplify maintenance. The regular use ended in the eighties and two were preserved. One of them is fully functional and both are located in the museum in Shenyang.