Detail View: P.A. Crush & C.W. Kinder Digital Archive:

P.A. Crush

The “Rocket of China” photographed shortly after its completion in 1881 and before brass mouldings of Chinese dragons were added to the side-tanks. Rocket was the first locomotive built in China and was constructed secretly by Claude Kinder ( but with Tong King Shing's (Tang Tingshu) knowledge) during the winter of 1880/81 in the Tongshan (Tangshan) workshops of the Kaiping coal mines. Kinder used the boiler and cylinders (8” x 15½”) from portable winding engines, channel iron and other scrap materials to construct the engine. The chilled-iron wheels, made by Whitney & Son of Philadelphia, were purchased as scrap.  The wheel-base was 8 ft 4 inches having six wheels, four coupled. Kinder himself briefly describes this engine in his own paper presented to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1890 (see E9. in this collection). A more thorough description is provided in chapter XV of J.H. Wilson’s book “ China – Travels and Investigations in the Middle Kingdom” (see B1. in this collection). (A8/29)

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SECTION X(c) - AlbumP27/292

P.A. Crush & C.W. Kinder