After observing trains on the Namboku Line of the Sendai City Subway, I visited Sendai West Park in the city center. My objective was to see Steam Locomotive Unit No. 1 of the Class C60 (hereafter referred to as C60 1), which is preserved in the park.
Let us take a brief look at the Class C60. It is a 4-6-4 (Whyte notation) steam locomotive with a tender. The C60 was originally developed as the Class C59 by the Ministry of Railways in 1941 and was later converted into the Class C60. What was the background behind the appearance of the C60?
The Class C59 originally designed to haul express trains on trunk lines. However, many of these trunk lines were electrified during the 1950s. As a result, the C59 locomotives had to be reassigned to local lines. The problem was that local lines had weaker load-bearing capacity. Therefore, the heavy axle load of the C59 needed to be reduced to allow operation on these lines. To achieve this, the wheel arrangement was changed from the 4-6-2 configuration of the C59 to the 4-6-4 configuration of the C60 by adding one trailing axle.
C60 1 was originally built in 1941 at the Hitachi Kasado Works as C59 27. It was later converted into C60 1 at the Japanese National Railways Hamamatsu Works in 1953. After operating for 15 years as C60 1, it was retired from service in 1968 and moved to Sendai West Park. It is an extremely rare steam locomotive, as it is the only preserved Class C60 in Japan. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to everyone involved in preserving C60 1 in Sendai City.
