This post card , published and printed in Hong Kong in the early 20th Century by the ubiquitous M. Sternberg of Queens Road from tie to pops up for auction on the Ebay or Delcampe auction sites. The caption purports to suggest that the scene is of the railway in Canton ( Guangzhou) China. This is not true. Not only was the locomotive (No.17) and the type of rolling stock shown in the picture never exported to China but the surrounding trees and scenery do not match Guangzhou. About the time the time this postcard was published the Canton-Hankow Railway was beginning to be constructed (it eventually took over 30 years for completion) and this railway did import some locomotives with the same wheel arrangement as the one in the picture but there were many other differences and these were allocated numbers 20 to 23 inclusive.
I spent some time researching this picture with railway history enthusiasts located in USA and after some time they were able to pinpoint a locomotive which matches the one in the picture on the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad which operated through Canton , Ohio. The design matches perfectly No.17 which was supplied at the end of the 19th Century.
So it seems that M. Sternberg was probably not too concerned about possible copyright infringement and flexibility with his captions when it came to selling his postcards.
