4-6-0 Steam Locomotives in Indonesia

Class 371/C51 (Locobase 4745)

Data from [] also "Locomotif C51" in Wikipedia at [], last accessed 15 August 2026. Works numbers for order 0380 were 5593-5602 in 1912.

See Indra Krishnamurti at [] for building dates and numbers both of predecessor railways and the Indonesian State Railways. Photographs in Ziel and Eagleson (1973) show elephant-eared engines with Belpaire boilers.

As the NIS acquired ten class 371/C20 radial tanks from Hartmann (Locobase 4732) the railway decided to buy passenger power in the form of this ten-locomotive class of superheated Ten-wheelers from Manchester, England. Six went to work on the East Java line leaving the Surabaya Pasar Turi station west into Central Java on a seven-hour schedule; they were based at Cepu. The other four handled the Jakarta-Bogor express.

C51s originally rated a 60 kph (37 mph) maximum speed, but were modified to upgrade their speed rating to 75 kph (46.5 mph). Not limited to passenger duties, notes Wikipedia, "the NIS 371/C51 was used to pull freight trains, specifically those transporting petroleum for *Koloniale Petroleum Verkoop Mij* (KPVM), a division of *Nederlandsche Koloniale Petroleum Maatschappij* (NKPM)."

Class leader C5101 avoided dismantling and went on display at the Ambarawa Railway Museuam.

Class 81 (Locobase 10419)

Data from "Compound Freight Locomotive for Java," The Locomotive Magazine, Volume IX [9] (12 December 1903),p. 344. (Thanks to Claus Gaertner for his 17 March 2021email providing the proper transliteration of the builder's name.) Works numbers were 2767-2772 in 1902

Indra Krishnamurti's tabulation of Indonesian locomotives at [] (last accessed 28 May 2009) does not show this class under any railway Yet here it was, compound Ten-wheeler works number 2768, described as running on the standard gauge in Java, showing a brass dome over the leading coupled axle, widespread bogie, big LP cylinder on the right-hand side.

The additional information from Hartmann compiler Dieter Harnisch of Chemnitz shows the six locomotives in this class and the year Hartmann produced them..

Class C54 (Locobase 7524)

Data from 1946 Beyer, Peacock catalogue hosted on Martyn Bane's website at [] (accessed 21 May 2006). See also "Recent Locomotives for the Java Railways", Locomotive Magazine, Volume XXIX [29], No. 366 (15 February 1923), pp. 29-30. Works numbers for Batch #02209 were 6119-6124 in 1922.

The last six of this class of light-rail Tenwheelers came from BP instead of Hartmann, whose contribution appears in Locobase 4726. They used the typical BP Belpaire firebox.