James Chan: Dragages Hong Kong, is a very familiar company name on signs at major construction projects around Hong Kong. It’s parent company is Bouygues Construction The company was founded in Vietnam in 1902 as Société Française Industrielle D’Extreme-Orient. It undertook its first project, the dredging and maintenance of a 2,000 kilometre canal system in the Mekong Delta. In 1910 […]
» Read more
Paul Onslow has sent these photographs of the Hong Kong Tramways’ generating station situated by the banks of the Bowrington Canal in Wanchai. They are from the UK National Archives collection of the Hong Kong colonial office 1869-1910. There is no restriction / copyright issue. The first shows a “View of the Power-house looking South taken from the West side […]
» Read more
James Chan: The article, The Kowloon Motor Bus Company (1933) Ltd – Timeline, got me thinking about KMB buses in the 1960s. I found this: 1954 Model introduced. The AEC Regent V was a front-engined double-decker bus built by the Associated Equipment Company between 1954 and 1969. The Regent V had AEC’s own frontal design and concealed radiator as standard, It was […]
» Read more
IDJ has sent a series of car sale adverts for a number of Hong Kong companies. Further information about any of these firms would be gratefully received. This article was first posted on 22nd November 2020. Related Indhhk articles: Metro Cars (新英華汽車) and Austin automobiles in HK (1953-1970) Far East Motors – distributor of Chevrolet, Cadillac, Holden and Standard automobiles […]
» Read more
York Lo: Trailblazer: the life and time of Wang Tseng-hsiang (王增祥, 1926-2012),Taiwanese developer and investor in HK, Japan and the US Left: Wang Tseng-hsiang speaking to the press in HK in the early 2000s; Right: the cover of Wang’s book The Financial Collapse of Japan published in 1998 (Cosmos Books) A pioneer in the HK real estate industry in the […]
» Read more
Tymon Mellor: In 1904, as the Hong Kong Island tram system was readying for operation, attention focused on the opposite side of the harbour on the development of a tram network for Kowloon. After many false starts, just when it seemed that work was about to start on a Kowloon tram network, the Government had a major change of approach […]
» Read more
IDJ has sent this newspaper article about a vehicle built by the South China Iron Works for a rally held in Hong Kong in 1950. We have quite a lot of information regarding this company, all linked below. IDJ notes, “Unfortunately, the micro-film image of the vehicle that heads the article is too obscured to make much out of it. […]
» Read more
HF: Rob Weir started our interest in the possibility of Stonecutters Island being a site for Hong Kong airport given the dissatisfaction with Kai Tak post WW2 mainly related to its short runways and proximity to mountains. Rob found a Foreign Office file 371/53639 held at The National Archives at Kew, London, UK. The file refers to an investigation of […]
» Read more
By Fung Chi Ming The tricycle or ‘cycle rickshaw’, as some people now call it, combines the characteristics of bicycle and rickshaw. Tricycles could be found in Asia and around the world, but they differed significantly in design and appearance. In Malacca and Singapore, it was a carriage with a passenger seat on the left side of the rider. In […]
» Read more
IDJ: Before HAECO came into existence, three companies offered aircraft maintenance services at Kai Tak. JAMCO and PAMAS merged to become HAECO (Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company) on 1 November 1950. CNAC disappeared from the scene in 1949 when the government in China changed hands and CNAC’s assets were then subjected to a long drawn out legal battle in the […]
» Read more