Taiwan 300→E43→EK900 Steam Locomotives

The 300 class was a group of tank locomotives planned as a response to the increasing traffic volume on the Mountain Line between Miaoli (苗栗) and Taichung (臺中), where the existing 80 class was no longer sufficient. The design broadly followed the Japanese 4110 class. However, while all JGR 4110 class locomotives were built by Kawasaki, and similar locomotives for private railways were built by Mitsubishi, the 300 class was built by Kisha Seizō, so there were some differences in detail. Six locomotives were built in 1915, four in 1918, and one in 1919, for a total of eleven.
Even the introduction of these powerful locomotives did not fundamentally remove the transport bottleneck on the steeply graded section, and the Government-General consequently constructed a separate Coastal Line, now the Western Coast Line. As a result, the number of through trains over the Mountain Line decreased, and the 300 class gradually became surplus. In addition, operational problems such as a tendency to derail further narrowed its field of use. In the 1937 revision of class names, the type became the E43 class, and three locomotives were withdrawn the following year, 1938. By the end of the war, they had already been relegated to shunting service, and only two remained in working order.
Sources differ regarding the number of locomotives on the books at the end of the war. Historical Survey of Japanese Activities Overseas: Taiwan Volume gives the number as seven, suggesting that one more locomotive may have been withdrawn during the war, but eight locomotives were actually taken over by the Taiwan Railways Administration. Whether this discrepancy reflects an error in the records, or a difference in how stored, withdrawn, and officially registered locomotives were treated, remains a subject for further examination. After the war, the type became the EK900 class under the Taiwan Railways Administration and remained in use until around the mid-1960s.