China (Manchukuo / Japan): South Manchuria Railway communications map, c. 1930

The South Manchuria Railway was built as a part of the Chinese Eastern Railway in 1898-1903 by Imperial Russia according to the Russian-Chinese convention and the Convention of Peking 1860.

The South Manchuria Railway Company (南満州鉄道株式会社/南満洲鉄道株式会社 Minami Manshū Tetsudō Kabushiki-gaisha, or 満鉄 Mantetsu) (Chinese: 南满铁路） was a company founded in the Empire of Japan in 1906, taken over after the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), and operated within China in the Japanese-controlled South Manchuria Railway Zone. The railway itself ran from Lüshun Port at the southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula to Harbin, where it connected to the Chinese Eastern Railway.

In 1945, the Soviet Union invaded and liberated the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Rolling stock and moveable equipment was looted, and taken back to the Soviet Union, some of which was returned when the Chinese Communist government came into power. The South Manchuria Railway Company or Mantetsu was dissolved by order of the American occupation authorities in occupied Japan.

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