Re: Edgar Warwick, Car Checker

You're in luck - I KNOW where it is!

a few years back I managed to get hold of a copy of a rare book - Les rails caledoniens by Jean Rolland, which was self published by the author in new caledonia, and they only printed 900 copies. I bought it because it is stuffed full of photos of the decauville 040T working in the nickel mines, but it covers all the railways on New Caledonia. Most were 500mm, 600mm, or 760mm in the various nickel workings, but they did build a colonial metre gauge line from Noumea to Paita. The line closed in 1940, but was reopened by the 790th Railway Transportation Company in 1942 to help move stuff around the island. The loco in your photo is one of two Decauville 460T supplied in 1911 (but not delivered until 1912), Decauville works no.s 637 and 638. When the line closed most of the stock lay in state. Apparently the 101st engineers (and general patch) requisitioned the entire line and managed to get no. 637 and a corpet Louvet 060T working in 2.5 weeks. No. 638 has an entry in its logbook for 12/5/1942, but nothing else afterwards, Mr Rolland assumes this is when it was requisitioned, abut that it had been out of use when the railway closed so probably wasn't used by the US (or it could have been used for spares for it's sister). Either way, the double lines around the lower part of the tank are very characteristic of the design, and the front end and couplings are the correct type, so I'm 100% certain it's New Caledonia and either w/n 637 or 638, with a leaning towards 637 as this was the first one fixed up. The two locos survived the war but were scrapped in 1953. The other metre gauge locos used by the US Army were 2 90HP Orenstein & Koppel 060t from noumea docks, 2 GE diesels, 2 brookvilles, and 6 davenport diesels. Apparently munitions were stored along the line during WW2, and one of the locos had the boiler removed, a caterpillar diesel engine put in place and was used to work munitions trains!
The wire message is wrong on the date of the railway's opening though - construction started in the 1880s and the first section was opened in 1904.

I don't suppose there are many people on here with copies of Mr Rolland's book, and the only other book to mention new caledonia (CS Small's) focuses on the nickel mines, rather than the Chemin de fer colonial.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/14/2014 03:42PM by Brack.