Claude W. Kinder

Claude William Kinder C.M.G., simplified Chinese: 金达; traditional Chinese: 金達; pinyin: Jin Da (* August 10, 1852, † August 9, 1936 in Churt, England) was an English engineer. For over thirty years he was engineer-in-chief of the Kaiping Tramway and Imperial Railways of North China.

Claude William Kinder was the third son of Major Thomas William Kinder who served as Master of the Hong Kong Mint from 1863–1868 and the Director of the Imperial Japanese Mint in Osaka between 1870 and 1875.

Tutored by his father, Claude later studied railway engineering in St. Petersburg before obtaining his first professional appointment as an assistant engineer with Imperial Japanese Railways in 1873. Forced to leave Japan because of civil war in 1878 he moved to Shanghai where he met Tong King-sing who appointed him as an engineer with the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company at Tangshan near to the ancient walled city of Kaiping. Kinder’s initial brief was to help with the sinking of coal mine shafts at the new colliery and to construct a railway from the mines to the nearest navigable river. Chinese politics initially prevented the building of this railway and in consequence Kinder surveyed and built a canal for coal barges to operate between the river at Lutai and Hsukochuang (Xugezhuang) from where a short tramway was constructed to Tangshan.

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