page_title: Da Lat–Thap Cham railway
section_title: Steam
hierarchical_section_title: Da Lat–Thap Cham railway / Locomotives / Steam
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: La Gare de Dalat en Vietnam.
context_page_description: The Da Lat–Thap Cham railway or Da Lat-Phan Rang railway was an 84 km rack railway connecting the city of Da Lat to the main North–South railway at Tháp Chàm in Ninh Thuận Province. It was established by the French administration of Indochina in 1932 after thirty years of construction in phases, beginning in 1903. The first section, running 41 km from Tháp Chàm to Sông Pha, opened in 1919, and the second section, running 43 km from Song Pha to Da Lat, opened in 1932. Due to the mountainous terrain, the Sông Pha–Da Lat section used rack rails in three sections, and included five tunnels. The Da Lat–Tháp Chàm railway is occasionally referred to as a Crémaillère railway, referring to the French word for the rack used on its rails.
  Abandoned during the Vietnam War, the line was gradually dismantled after the North Vietnamese victory in 1975, its infrastructure being used to repair the heavily damaged North–South railway line. In the 1990s, a 7 km section of the line between Da Lat Railway Station and the nearby village of Trại Mát was restored and returned to active use as a tourist attraction; it remains active as of 2017.
context_section_description: Soon after the first part of the railway line was opened, the French Compagnie Des Chemins De Fer De L'Indochine (CFI) set about importing cogwheel locomotives that could be used also on rack sections. CFI initially purchased five HG 4/4-type locomotives in 1924 from Swiss manufacturer SLM Winterthur (German: Schweizerische Lokomotiv- und Maschinenfabrik). 1929 two locomotives followed from German manufacturer ME (German: Maschinenfabrik Esslingen), built after the Swiss plans as a so-called "Reparationsleistung". In 1930 SLM delivered another two locomotive, bringing the effective to nine. These locomotives were delivered as numbers 301 through 309 and later were given the serial numbers CFI 40-301 through CFI 40-309. Four locomotives (301, 305, 307 and 309) were destroyed during World War II during the Japanese occupation of Indochina. 1947 it was possible to purchase four similar but slightly less powerful locomotives from the Swiss Furka-Oberalp company which had electrified its lines a few years ago. These were HG 3/4-type locomotives (given serial numbers CFI 31-201 through 31-204). The locomotives were transferred to a Vietnamese railway company, Vietnam Hoa Xa, after the dissolution of French Indochina; the serial numbers remained the same, but with VHX rather than CFI as a prefix. The locomotives functioned on steam, generating a pulling power of 600–820 cv.
  The remains of the Furka-Oberalp steam locomotives were repurchased by the Swiss Furka Heritage Railway together with the two locomotives 40-304 and 40-308. It was intended to use them on the restored original Furka rack line. Two locomotives (31-201 and 31-204) were returned to active service with their original numbers 1 and 9.
caption: A steam locomotive at Da Lat station
exif: {"Image Make": "Panasonic", "Image Model": "DMC-FX35", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Not Absolute", "Image Software": "Ver.1.0", "Image DateTime": "2008:07:06 02:59:00", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "420", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 14, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "0", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Not Absolute", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "10042", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6703", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/125", "EXIF FNumber": "47/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Landscape Mode", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "160", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:07:06 02:59:00", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:07:06 02:59:00", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "52/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "768", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1024", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "9894", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "59", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Landscape", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}