Historic steam locomotives back in the Netherlands

Two historic steam locomotives arrived at the Katwijk Steam Train Museum in Leiden on Wednesday. The steam locomotives produced in the Netherlands served in the sugar factories in the former Dutch East Indies last century for the transport of sugar cane from the fields to the factory. After 21 years of consultation, the locomotives are back in their country of origin. A crowdfunding campaign has been launched to finance the associated costs.

By: Jonah van der Oever

Kees Plug, board member of Stoomtrein Katwijk Leiden, says that the wish came about twenty years ago to bring these steam locomotives back to the Netherlands: ‘These two steam locomotives were manufactured by a manufacturer from Weesp. At that time, about 250 locomotives were produced in that factory and almost all those locomotives were transported to the former Dutch East Indies. The locomotives that remained in the Netherlands were all scrapped in 1970. So at a certain point we thought it would be nice to bring two of those original steam locomotives to our museum.’

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Lobbying

From then on the project started. For years, the Indonesian sugar factories and the Indonesian government have been lobbying. Over the years, the track of this project often seemed to come to a dead end, but last December they received the message that two steam locomotives were ready to be picked up and since April 17 this year they have been in the museum Stoomtrein Katwijk Leiden.

Transportation

The transport of the historic steam locomotives was already a project in itself. First, the steam locomotives are hoisted onto special ‘deep wagon trucks’ using a large crane. These special trucks carry so-called ‘flat pet’ containers. These are containers with only a bottom, without sides or roof and the steam locomotives were placed in those containers. The locomotives were transported with those trucks to the port of Surabaya, a town on Java, and from there the steam locomotives were loaded onto a container ship that sailed to Malaysia. In Malaysia, the locomotives were transferred to the next container ship that sailed to the port of Rotterdam, and so they ended up in Valkenburg again with the help of special trucks.

History

The steam locomotives served at two different sugar factories in what was then the Dutch East Indies. Such a sugar factory is actually, by Dutch standards, a huge plantation with large sugar cane fields. There was a whole railway network on that plantation and the steam locomotives drove through those fields with large trucks filled with sugar cane. That sugar cane was therefore transported from the field to the factory using the steam locomotives. In addition to the two steam locomotives, more historic railway equipment came over from Indonesia: a rail bicycle, which is, as it were, a moped on a track that was mainly used for inspection, and four sugar cane lorries that were attached to the steam locomotives in which the sugar cane was loaded.

Exhibition

You can already see the two steam locomotives outside at the Museum Steam Train Katwijk Leiden, and an exhibition with the theme of the two locomotives will be opened within a good month. In this exhibition you will learn everything about the two historic steam locomotives, for example about how they were built and the technology surrounding such a steam locomotive. You will see the steam locomotives as they are now, old and lived in, they come from 1925 and 1928. But in the coming years the volunteers of the museum will change this. For example, a new steam boiler will be installed in one of the locomotives and the steam locomotives will be roadworthy and restored to their former glory in the coming years.

crowdfunding

Of course, this beautiful project involves the necessary costs. If you want to support this project, you can do so by going to the museum’s website, namely www.stoomtreinkatwijkleiden.nl. On the website you can search for the page ‘crowdfunding’. There, in addition to information about the two historic steam locomotives, you will find the bank account number to which you can deposit money to support this beautiful project.