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Li Hou Kou
390 tons or 873,600 lbs. + 2% overweight at an average @ 82 cents per lb.
* $730,679.04
Total for castings from South China Iron Works and Liu Hou Kou
= $1,436,3 39.52
Insofar as the South China Iron Works contract is concerned the quantities may be taken as those actually ordered and the weights as correct. Parts from similar types of wagons which have arrived on this section from China have been weighed in order to confirm these figures.
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In addition, the Kowloon Canton Railway Workshops made approximately 5,000 bronze journal bearings weighing 15 lbs. each. The cost at that time is estimated to have been about $1.50 per lb. making a total of $112,500 for the 75,000 lbs. The Workshop also made and supplied about 300 tons of steel rivets from iron steel bars. It is estimated that the cost of the labour would be about 20 per lb. and would total about $134,400. orders were completed.
5.
Both these
The total cost of the castings was therefore:-
South China Iron Works
Liu Hou Kou Iron Works
Railway Workshops
BR BR DE
705,660
7949
6.
$
730,679 246,900
$ 1,683,239
In addition a large sum was paid by the Kowloon Canton Railway for lighterage, labour, and supervision charges in collecting the wagon parts from the Ministry of Communications' sites in the Colony. There is no record of these costs and it is not possible to estimate what they were. It is certain they were heavy and had been paid to the various firms concerned before December 1941.
7.
The major part of the whole contract was completed before the Japanese attacked Hong Kong. It is impossible to say how much was still outstanding but Mr. Wong and Mr. Perry, the Chief Accountant and Stores Officer of the Railway at that time, are certain very little remained. Mr. Perry remembers paying out large sums of money to the South China Iron Works and Liu Hou Kou and other firms as the work progressed.
8.
With reference to paragraph 4 of Lt. Col. R.D. Walker's letter of 22nd February, 1950, a copy of an extract from the War Supplies Order Book held in the Hong Kong Treasury is attached for your information. A copy of the report compiled by Lt. Col. Walker in 1943 while a prisoner of war is also held in the Hong Kong Treasury but the special report on the Kowloon Canton Railway's transactions is missing from the papers.
The War Supplies Order Book unfortunately does not include the schedules.
9.
None of the other persons mentioned by Lt. Col. R.D. Walker is now in the Colony. It is believed that Major Walters now holds the rank of Brigadier and is serving with the Ministry of Transport.
10.
Disbursements by the Hong Kong Government for this contract total at least £105,000. In my savingram No, 974 of 25th November, 1949, it was suggested that a final settlement
/of half of
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