The International Steam Pages


Kipling Country, Burma, 2009

This is the sixteenth part of our 2009 Burmese Odyssey. To read more about our 2009 bash which includes many non-steam items, please see Rob and Yuehong in the Golden Land 2009.


It's a generation thing, while my children (not so young now) may associate the name with someone who 'made very good cakes', for those of us of a certain age Rudyard Kipling is the face of British India who made a side trip where he chanced upon a Burma Girl, "by the old Moulmein pagoda, lookin' lazy by the sea"...

In fact, the town has not changed very much since then, save for the desecration which is the new bridge across the Salween (Thanlwin) river, however, every year brings down a few of the traditional buildings:

But somehow the Chevy truck buses soldier on, this one is on a charter for a group of Muslim students:

This is my sixth time in the city and, as always, I park up in the Breeze Guest House on the water front, a modest enough establishment, but one for which the word ambience could have been invented.

The official excuse for yet another visit is to get some background filming done for our proposed documentary on the rice mill at Dakhondaing. But first, after four years since our first visit to the area together, we need to check for changes to the rice mill operation. For that only a taxi will do to make a whistle stop tour. We don't expect too much in the way of new discoveries, but in that respect we are unduly pessimistic. After a 06.30 breakfast we load up and headed south, first stop is at the bottle store on the edge of town. The red petrol is smuggled in from neighbouring Thailand, allegedly cars run best on a judicious mix of it and the colourless variety.

Suitably refreshed, we make for our first mill. The Tangye G size engine (#3110) is the same as before, but as expected the owner has replaced his vertical boiler with a horizontal one, it is just being lit up and will work later, it is a shame to miss it in action, but we filmed it in 2005.

In 2005, he had a Tangye badged for Hosain Hamadanee stored here but it has disappeared to Mudon - one to look for later in the day! The second mill previously ran a small unidentified engine but that has gone to be replaced by a standard late 10" Tangye #12298:

Back on the main road, we stop by a mill whose engine (in my innocence) I failed to identify in 2005. In fact, with the benefit of experience and the right questions directed at the owner, we establish it is part of a Ruston and Hornsby over-boiler engine system, which was divided some 20 years ago by the current owner. The boiler bears the number 113827, rated for 12 HP. (There is now an extended report on Kwewan available from our 2010 crusade.)

The owner also informed us that there is no point in our going next to Kawkapun as the mill and engine have been relocated to Bilu Island opposite Moulmein (somewhere we make it to later in the trip). Instead we proceed to Mudon where we find the twin cylinder (ex portable) engine we saw in 2005, it has been in use just a day earlier. Next we locate the Hosain Hamadanee engine (actually a Tangye #11320), it is not in the best of health but its new owner seems satisfied with it.

We rush past a closed mill and two working mills we had documented quite recently and head for a small village further south. Barely pausing for breath we check three Tangye numbers on engines we had seen in 2005 - an early red 10" model, a very leaky 12" model and a disgusting 8" model, Han and Yuehong are looking for the 1878 Paris medal it carries under the filth:

The fourth mill in the village is not as my notes expected, inside we find a small Marshall which has worked earlier in the day (I expected a small Cowie!), there is no more rice left to mill, the owner has gone to Moulmein so there is no way to know when we might have a chance to see it working. 

It is not yet noon and we are all flagging so we retire for a fresh sugar juice with lemon, anything stronger would have gone straight to my head. Shortly after, we reach the limit of today's expedition, another village with a concentration of rice mills. The first mill with a large Marshall in 2005 is clearly long out of use, the next two mills are also closed, the first has an unidentified engine, the other a lovely Foster which we saw working in 2006. At the end of the village the small Marshall lies dumped and unloved. The mill is a mess, a new boiler lies on its side, the chimney is being rebuilt and a smart green Tangye with a Paris Medal has been installed (an unusual 'S size', heaven knows what this meant as M was 14"; it is maybe #3520 but the number is covered in fresh paint):

I am having difficulty keeping count of the engines we have seen today and on the way back to the main road we all nearly miss a new (2007) mill which is clearly working. We dive in and find another 10" Foster portable at work. What makes this operation very unusual is that engine and boiler are in the charge of two rather camera shy ladies:

The missing Cowie is still bugging me as we head for the last known mill in the area. But when we get there, we find a Ransomes, Sims and Jefferies engine, again part of a portable system, its Ransomes boiler (#40119) is stored nearby. The working boiler is on the left, this is another new engine to us:

Fortunately, Han restores my sanity when he finds the remains of the Cowie at the back of the mill. Mystery solved (probably)! It is now time to call at Dakhondaing to make sure all is well there. The mill is 'resting', but will be running again in a couple of days, giving us just enough time to have a 24 hour holiday. On the way home, I make one final request to see one of the smallest active engines in Burma, the owner claims it is all of 7" but I have my doubts - click here for a 2005 picture - but I have to include this final shot as the light is gorgeous:

Yuehong is still going strong after 9 hours of almost non-stop bashing (Han is visibly wilting by now) - the valve chest cover has "C.R. Co" on it, what it stands for I don't know...

We are back in Moulmein and showered before the sun sets. It has been an incredible day, we have photographed nine engines working and four more which have just worked or will work shortly, and seen another six in conditions varying from derelict to almost ready to run. We have seen in passing two obviously working mills and two more out of use. In other words, we have made extraordinary good use of our expensive investment in a taxi. However, from now on in this area, we are back on the buses and pick-ups, here is a reminder from 2006 of the conditions that implies for the buses:

And this is the inside of one 2009 pick-up, after we lost sufficient passengers so that I could photograph more than a smelly armpit:

But, never mind when this is the view from the dinner table and there is a full jar of beer to toast another successful day:

After a much needed day off, our next two days were spent researching and filming in Dakhondaing before finding steam on the island in the background of the picture above.


The full list of 2009 trip pages is on:

These are the individual (stationary steam) pages from the 2009 trip:

Our earlier explorations are described in pages linked from:


Rob and Yuehong Dickinson

Email: webmaster@internationalsteam.co.uk