Mallet swansong in Indonesia
Keith Chester has no doubts when asked to name his favourite railway. It was halfway around the world on the main Indonesian island of Java.
“Its small depot housed the last working Mallet tender locos in the world...”
In spring 1974 a copy of Dusty Durrant’s PNKA Power Parade dropped through my letterbox. I still have it, well thumbed and now rather battered, and it is probably the railway book I have returned to most often over the past five decades.
Within its covers this book depicted an almost mind-blowing array of steam locomotives, most of which were still in service on the state railways of Indonesia during Durrant’s visits to the archipelago in 1970 and 1971. These ranged from tiny 0-4-0Ts to 2-12-2Ts or giant 2-8-8-0s, from classic tram locos to rack engines (the last of which had been constructed in 1966-67), from dainty 2-4-0s to modern 2-8-2s; and in between almost every conceivable variant of the steam locomotive all assembled on one island. As a student I could then but dream of this paradise. But one day...
Thanks to Durrant’s pioneering work, Indonesia unsurprisingly became an ever more popular destination for steam enthusiasts in the 1970s, but their subsequent reports in the Continental Railway Journal or World Steam also recorded the closure of branch lines and the steady decline of steam. By 1980, when I was finally able to get there, Indonesia was no longer the ShangriLa of steam Durrant had seen, but there was still enough activity to warrant the long flight and a month-long visit.
Heading the list of places to seek out was a village called Cibatu in West Java, located on the main line from Jakarta to Bandung and Yogyakarta. The attraction? It was the junction for an almost 50-kilometre long branch with, by Javanese standards in 1980, a reasonable level of service. Moreover, its small depot housed the last working Mallet tender locomotives in the world. For somebody who had grown up looking in awe at pictures of Big Boys and Challengers working in the USA this was irresistible. When Durrant visited in the early 1970s Cibatu had solely Mallets on its books, the only shed in the world able to make such a boast.
Though many of the early railways constructed in Java kept to the plains, sooner or later the mountain ranges that are such a feature of this fertile and crowded island had to be crossed. A 1067mm (3ft 6in) gauge main line running south of the capital and
principal port of Batavia, modern-day Jakarta, to Bogor was opened in 1873. After a break of eight years this was extended first south and then east over the Preanger Mountains to Bandung and Cibatu, where it turned southwest to Garut, an important regional centre and a hill station for the Dutch colonialists.
The next section of the main line on to Yogyakarta between Cibatu and Tasikmalaya was opened in 1893 and the line to Garut became a branch. Finally, in 1930 the branch itself was extended to Cikajang, centre of a tea growing area; this was the last new railway constructed by the Staats Spoorwegen, the state railway, before the Japanese occupation of 1941-45.
To work the steeply graded section of the main line between Bandung and Tasikmalaya, the SS began to invest in Mallet locomotives. In 1899 the first of an eventually 16-strong class of 0-4-4-2Ts arrived from Hartmann and Schwartzkopff (two of the same type were also sold to the Damascus–Hama railway in 1906). These were followed by a series of rather clunkier 2-6-6-0Ts, 34 delivered between 1904 and 1911.
From six articulated axles the SS then made the bold leap to six conventionally coupled ones and the first of the famous Javanik 2-12-2Ts appeared in 1912; 28 had been put into service by 1920. But traffic was booming on the SS and most of it went over the mountainous route via Bandung. Something even more powerful was required and in 1916 the SS obtained from Alco (European manufacturers were otherwise engaged) eight enormous 2-8-8-0s; 22 similar ones were acquired from Hanomag, Hartmann and Werkspoor between 1919 and 1924.
With the heavy duty motive power now sorted out, the SS next ordered some lighter 2-6-6-0s, of which a total of 30 were delivered by Werkspoor and SLM in 1927–28. If the 2-8-8-0s impressed with their sheer bulk and size, then the 2-6-6-0s did so with clean lines; they were well-proportioned locomotives.
There are some wonderful photographs of the big Mallets working heavy main-line trains over the lofty and spindly viaducts of the Bandung–Tasikmalaya railway in the Dutch colonial era but in the early 1970s the few remaining were eking out their last days at Cibatu MPD, working short mixed trains west to Bandung and east to Tasikmalaya. (This is captured on film on Nick Lera’s excellent Wheels of Fire DVD).
By the end of the decade Cibatu retained a small allocation of what had become PJKA class CC10 2-6-6-0Ts and class CC50 2-6-6-0s for the Garut and Cikajang branch. It was, however, no longer the sole preserve of Mallet locomotives for no C1127, a very neat 2-6-0T dating from 1887, was now also on the depot’s books as station pilot.
First impressions
We arrived at Cibatu by train from Bandung in the late afternoon with little idea of what to expect. Immediately surrounded by a large group of curious locals we were put on a bejak (Editor’s note – a threewheeled motocycle-based taxi rather like the better-known Tuk Tuk) and rode in style a few hundred metres to a losmen, an Indonesian version of the German pension.
These were agreeable places to stay with a friendly welcome and simple and (usually) clean rooms. They lacked, as did then virtually every dwelling in Java, running water, and bathing facilities were provided by a mandi. This was a large tank, sometimes with goldfish swimming in it to keep the water clean, from which you scooped water with the plastic saucepan provided and then poured it over yourself. It was a heavenly feeling at the end of a hot and sweaty day of gricing.
In 1980 the daily train to Cikajang departed Cibatu at about 5.45am when it was still dark, and there were also a couple of short workings to Garut, one each roughly mid morning and mid afternoon. We spent a week at Cibatu chasing these trains using bemos, shared small minibuses that passed along the road every few minutes and put you down wherever you wanted when you yelled out.
The bemos were hopelessly overcrowded with people, their chickens and produce for sale at the
market, not to speak of their varying degrees of rust and disrepair, but were ideal for our purposes, easily outpacing the lumbering steam trains.
With locos working chimney first out of Cibatu, the afternoon return trips were usually in the spacious cab of one of the Mallets: a loco drifting downhill tender or bunker first with two or three carriages in tow did not offer the greatest photos. But the other way round...
The Cibatu-Garut-Cikajang branch was, like the proverbial game of football, a line of two halves. The first 19km from Cibatu to Garut ran fairly straight through a wide valley.
The railway looked flat but undulated a lot as it climbed steadily: Cibatu was 612 metres above sea level and Garut 717. With a couple of viaducts, fields of rice padi and volcanoes and mountains as a backdrop, this section was pleasant enough but offered little hint of what was to come.
Leaving Garut the line to Cikajang crossed a river and then began to climb almost continuously all the way to Cikajang, ascending 530 metres in 28km. Planned in the late 1920s this railway came at a time when engineers had powerful locos at their disposal and were far more confident of their ability to climb steeper gradients than they had been a generation previously.
I’ve no idea of what the actual grades were on the Cikajang line but they were certainly among the steepest I’ve ever seen an adhesion locomotive work over. This is why Cibatu had its fleet of Mallets. As the line climbed the mountain sides it twisted and turned over viaducts and through spectacular rice terraces and jungle. There were numerous photo opportunities and a week was certainly not long enough to explore them all.
By 1980 most of the traffic of the PJKA had been lost to the road and two or three old carriages sufficed for the trains taking villagers to and from the markets at Garut; sometimes a few tanker wagons destined for the Garut depot of the state-owned oil company Pertmina were tagged on at the end, and passengers found seats on these too. The Garut to Cikajang trains comprised a wooden bogie carriage of great lineage and one or two silver-liveried four-wheel covered vans, which must have been extremely hot and uncomfortable to ride in.
These short trains were just about within the limits of Cibatu’s oil-fired Mallets as they wheezed and shuffled their way to Garut and Cikajang. All too often the Mallets gave an impression they could barely pull themselves along, let alone any load. In 1980 the CC10 2-6-6-0Ts were very much on their last legs, leaking steam everywhere.
“I’ve no idea of what the grades were but they were certainly among the steepest I’ve ever seen an adhesion locomotive work over...”
The newer CC50s were maintained in slightly better condition by the wizard fitters at Cibatu shed, who somehow kept their locos on the road with the simplest of equipment in a tiny workshop with the machinery belt-driven in the traditional manner.
Return visits
In 1982–83 I was teaching in Malaysia and Java was now just a matter of the short flight from Singapore to Jakarta. In the school holidays I was able to go to Garut, albeit briefly, three more times in this period. In April 1982 I spent two full days on the Garut–Cikajang section.
It was the rainy season and the weather did not always cooperate. And change was afoot. The CC10s had in the meantime all been withdrawn and the formation of the passenger train now consisted of three covered goods wagons.
The next visit, in October 1982, was briefer still. I arrived in Garut in the late evening only to find the line to Cikajang had been closed the previous month.
Moreover, the town was covered in a four to five-centimetre thick layer of ash from the nearby Mount Galunggan, which had been erupting for several months. The air was a milky white, heavy with ash, and many people were wearing face masks. Having photographed the early morning arrival from Cibatu and the return departure, I quit Garut and sought out the cleaner air of sugar factories in the Cirebon area.
The final visit to Cibatu in July 1983 was equally fleeting but in less than 24 hours it was possible to photograph two departures to Garut, take some shots of two CC50s slumbering in the tropical night, to have some footplate rides and acquire a Werkspoor plate off a withdrawn 2-6-6-0. Leaving Cibatu, it was with the sad thought we’d never see a tender Mallet locomotive in regular service again. The end was in fact nearer than we had realised: the Cibatu–Garut branch was closed on 9th December 1983.
But never say never! In September 2018 the reactivation of the Cibatu– Garut line was announced, partly to bolster tourism in the region and partly to ease transportation problems in the rapidly growing conurbation of Garut. This was to be a full rebuild and the work was quickly pressed ahead.
Trials began on the first section between Cibatu and Wanaradja on 29th September 2019 and between Wanaradja and Garut on 12th March 2020. Work remaining to be done on the station and yard at Garut was presumably delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic but a press release in April 2021 foresaw the reopening of this line two months later.