Mukden’s Horse-Drawn Trams

A while back I did a round up of the old tram systems in China – primarily in northern China and Manchuria (see here).

So thanks to the reader who wrote to let me know about Shenyang (Mukden). The Japanese opened an electric tramway in 1925, and by 1937 there were 12 km of track and 21 trams. The system expanded over the years and closed in 1973. However, my highly knowledgeable reader informs me there was an earlier horse-drawn tram track laid around 1907/08. The horse-drawn tram ran from the old Chinese city Hsiao-hsi-men (Little west gate) passing by the I.R.N.C Peking- Mukden Railway’s Shenyang terminus and the to the South Manchuria Railway’s “Fengtien” station in the Japanese-built “new” town. The tram used ex-Tokyo horse trams rolling stock (Tokyo’s trams being modernized to electric-powered starting the end of 1903). Here’s a photo of this fascinating piece of old public transport and a link here to a good article on the Hong Kong Railway Association’s web site