Chosen Government Railway

History

After the end of the Second World War, all railways in Korea were nationalised, with the lines in South Korea becoming part of the Korean National Railroad, and those in North Korea becoming part of the Korean State Railway.

Organisation

The organisation of the Railway Bureau as of 1 September 1941:

Motive power

Sentetsu, or more accurately its predecessor, the National Railway, was created through the merger of the military railways and the Gyeongbu Railway, which had previously absorbed the Gyeongin Railway, on 1 September 1906. At the time of the merger, the Korean locomotive fleet was as follows:

When the National Railway became Sentetsu in 1910, the locomotive fleet had increased by only 21 engines; by the time Mantetsu took over the management of Korea's railways in 1917, the Sentetsu motive power fleet had grown from 115 in 1910 to 175. Mantetsu management lasted just under a decade, and by the time Sentetsu regained its independence in 1925 the locomotive park stood at 247 engines. The 1930s, however, saw enormous growth in Sentetsu's fleet. From 302 locomotives in 1930, by the end of the decade the number had more than doubled to 740 engines in 1940, and reached 1,000 in 1944. When Sentetsu was abolished after the end of the Pacific War there were 1,302 locomotives on the roster.

Classification system

Sentetsu's original classification and numbering scheme was replaced in 1918, after the Mantetsu took over management of the Korean railways in the previous year. Mantetsu introduced its own classification system, and numbered Sentetsu's locomotives within its own scheme. Though Sentetsu regained its independence in 1925, it wasn't until 1938 that Sentetsu undertook a general renumbering, in which all locomotives in Korea, including those owned by private railways, were classified and numbered in a unified scheme based on the Mantetsu system, in which steam locomotive classes were expressed in the form of two characters taken from the US-style wheel arrangement names, plus a class number.

The Chosen Government Railways system of classifying locomotives was as follows:

The type designations included the following:

For example, 4-6-2 is Pacific type, thus "Pashi", 2-8-2 is Mikado type, thus "Mika".

The class number is taken from Japanese numbers:

Thus, the third class of locomotives with a 4-6-2 wheel arrangement would be called パシサ - Pashisa.

Narrow-gauge steam locomotives did not use the designation forms based on wheel arrangement; instead, they all used ナキ ("Naki", from English "Narrow Gauge") plus a class number.

Classification of electric locomotives was slightly different from that used for steam locomotives. Although this also used the two character + class number arrangement, the first character was デ ("de", from 電気, denki, "electric"), while the second character indicated the number of powered axles (using the same number abbreviations as used for the class number). In practice, Sentetsu had only two types of electric locomotive, both with six powered axles - デロイ (DeRoI) and デロニ (DeRoNi).

Standard gauge steam locomotives

Standard gauge electric locomotives

Standard gauge railcars

Narrow gauge steam locomotives

Narrow gauge railcars

Routes

The rail lines of the Chosen Government Railway in 1945:

Private railways

A number of private railways existed during the period of the Japanese occupation of Korea; these were overseen by the Railway Bureau. After the end of the Second World War, these were all nationalised, both in North and South Korea.

Some of the privately owned railways in operation in Korea were: