Claude William children

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Claude William children

Claude William Kinder C.MG , Chinese  金 達 , Pinyin Jin Da (born August 10, 1852 - † August 9, 1936 in Churt , England ) was chief engineer of the Kaiping Tramway and Imperial Railways of North China for 30 years .

Life

Kinder was the third son of Major Thomas William Kinder, who was a manager at the Hong Kong Mint from 1863 to 1868 and was director of the Japanese Mint in Osaka between 1870 and 1875 .

After attending school under the supervision of his father, Claude Kinder went to Saint Petersburg to study railroad engineering. He took his first position in 1873 at the Japanese Ministry of Railways . He was forced to leave Japan by the Satsuma rebellion and went to Shanghai in 1878 where he met Tong King-sing . He appointed him as an engineer at the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company in Tangshan near Kaiping . Kinder's original assignment was to dig new shafts in the mine and to build a railroad from the mine to the nearest navigable river. The Chinese government initially prevented the plan for a railroad, so children instead had a canal built to transport the coal between the river at Lutai and Hsukochuang ( now Xugezhuang ). The last short distance was covered with a railway line to Tangshan.

The government had stipulated that only mules could be used to transport coal wagons on this railway line. But Kinder, with the tacit consent of Tong King-singing, built a steam locomotive in secret . The locomotive called " The Rocket of China " was the first steam locomotive built in China. From these humble beginnings, the Kaiping Tramway evolved into China's first major railway line, the Imperial Railways of China, and after the end of the Qing Dynasty , the Beijing - Mukden Railway .

The Chinese government made children an honorary Chinese official and awarded them the Order of the Double Dragon . In 1900 Kinder became a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in recognition of his contributions to the railroad and thus to Britain's financial interests in China.

literature

  • Peter Crush: Imperial Railways of North China. (“关 内外 铁路” 皮特 • 柯 睿 思 著. Bilingual in English and Chinese). Xinhua Publishing House, Beijing 2013, ISBN 978-7-5166-0564-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter Crush: China's "Second First Railway - The Development of Kaiping Tramway into Imperial Railways of North China". ( Memento from October 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) on hkrs.org.hk.
  2. ↑ a b c Mr. CW Children - Pioneer of Railways in China. In: The Times . August 10, 1936.
  3. ↑ P. Kevin MacKeown: The Hong Kong Mint 1864-1868. In: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch. Volume 47, 2007.
  4. ^ PH Kent: Railway Enterprise in China. London 1907.
  5. ^ WO Leitch: Early Days on the Beijing Mukden Railway. Chief Engineer PM Rly, Tongshan University, April 24, 1930.
  6. ^ The London Gazette June 1, 1900 and HKRS-Crush-Collection.
personal data
SURNAME Children, Claude William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Children of Claude W.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British railway engineer
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1852
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 1936
Place of death Churt , England