SSJ 1622 Bergkoningin

This locomotive was designed by the Department of Colonies’ Technical Office in cooperation with the Swiss locomotive factory SLM. The track gauge in the former Dutch East Indies was different than the track gauge used in the Netherlands. This locomotive was built to run on 1,067 mm-wide track known as ‘Cape gauge’. The name Cape gauge comes from the Cape province in South Africa, where this particular track width was widely used. In the Netherlands, it was primarily the steam tram companies who used that gauge. The SSJ 1622 is a powerful locomotive that was mainly deployed for transporting goods along the mountain lines on Java. During the Japanese occupation, the series was renumbered and all locomotives were assigned new numbers between 5001 and 5030. In 1981, Indonesia donated the locomotive to the Railway Museum as a gesture of friendship. There, it was given the nickname Sri Gunung (Bergkoningin in Dutch), meaning ‘Queen of the Mountains’.