The running gear of the steam locomotive HG 4/4 # 704 of the Furka mountain railway (Dampfbahn Furka Bergstrecke, DFB) is a masterpiece of earlier engineering. Designed and built in 1923 at the Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works in Winterthur (SLM) for the Song Pha (formerly Krong Pha) - Da Lat cogwheel line in Indochina (now Vietnam) for the Paris-based railway company "Compagnie Génerale de Colonies" . 4-cylinder compound, with separate drive (high pressure) on the 4 adhesion axles and on two cogwheels via the low pressure cylinders. The locomotive was brought back to Switzerland in 1990 and refurbished in over 48,000 working hours over 12 years in the Chur and later Uzwil workshops. The locomotive is in Realp now and several smaller jobs still need to be done before she can be heated up for the first time in decades.
