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In order to quickly complete the railroad network throughout Japan, the Japan National Railways (JNR) established simple standards and built lines accordingly.
Since some of these routes could now exceed 100 km, locomotives were needed that could serve such lengths.
For this reason, the type C12 was converted to a tender locomotive (a type of steam locomotive, also called a tender, which has a fuel carrier connected to it that carries coal and water to be fed into the boiler) as type C56s. 160 of them were built between 1935 and 1939 by Kisha-Seizo, Kawasaki, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and Nippon-Sharyo.
In addition, there is another that a private railroad ordered from Mitsubishi on its own in 1941.
One of the physical characteristics of this locomotive is the convex notch on the tender which provides visibility when operating in the opposite direction.
During the Pacific War, 90 of them were offered to the military and used in Southeast Asia in Thailand and Myanmar.
After the war, 2 of them returned from Thailand.
In Japan, they were used until 1973. Currently, 2 are in dynamic preservation (refers to locomotives that have been preserved in a ready-to-operate state, and/or are still running today) at the Kyoto Railway Museum and Oigawa Railway, and there are 20 in static preservation (refers to locomotives that are preserved in a way that does not allow them to be immediately operated, and/or that are simply on display).
Additionally, there are some, both dynamically preserved and statically preserved locomotives, in Thailand.
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