Cepu Forest Railway

About

The Cepu Forest Railway (officially branded as Loco Tour Cepu) is a 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) narrow gauge light logging railway that runs through teak plantations to the northwest of the town of Cepu, in Cepu district, on the boundary between Central and East Java provinces, on the island of Java in Indonesia. It is owned by Perhutani, a state-owned forestry company of Indonesia. Steam traction is still dominant. Along with Olean Sugar Mill in Situbondo, East Java (a candidate World Heritage Site), Tasik Madu sugar mill and the rack railway at Ambarawa (both also in Central Java), the Cepu Forest Railway is one of the four main centres of steam railway heritage remaining in Java. In fact, with four operable steam locomotives, built by Berliner Maschinenbau and Du Croo & Brauns, the Cepu depot has the largest concentration of active preserved steam locomotives in Indonesia. It is therefore of major heritage importance and due to its globally significant status as an active and complete steam locomotive-powered logging railway it might also be considered a candidate World Heritage Site. The railway was originally constructed circa 1915 and was fully operational until the late 1990s, with over 300 kilometres (190 mi) of track in the Perhutani forests. Since 1998 much of the track has been lifted, but occasional logging trains continued to operate until 2002. Since 2002 only chartere

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.