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Click here for the introduction to Articulated Steam Locomotives of the World.
Wiener classified true Articulated Steam Locomotives in
three parts:
1. Articulated
Locomotives having one driven and one undriven bogie - eg single
Fairlies
2. Articulated
Locomotives with one engine and two driven bogies - eg geared
locomotives such as Shay, Climax, Heisler
3. Articulated Locomotives with two
engines and two sets of driving wheels - eg double Fairlies, Meyers,
Garratts (updated 6th April 2023)
3a. Articulated Locomotives with two
engines and two two sets of driving wheels - eg double Fairlies, Meyers,
Garratts
Ball and Socket Joint Locomotives
According to Wiener, a 600mm gauge double six coupled
locomotive with 'ball and socket' transmission was built by Krauss in 1889.
It appears to have been Krauss 2418 from the works list. Nothing more seems
to be known about it.
Chain Driven Locomotives
Schwartzkopff/BMAG built some chain driven locomotives, of
those known to have survived until relatively recent times, one was reported
derelict on the Puerto Casado railway in Paraguay (a photograph is in 'World
of South American Steam'). However. the most noteworthy were two reported at
Cukir Sugar Mill in East Java in the early 1970s although they have long
disappeared. This is #2 'Eppo' photographed by Ivor Harding:
Articulated Locomotives with Two Engines and Transmission
by Connecting Rods
This group is by far the largest and most familiar to
enthusiasts, apart from possibly Mallets which are strictly only
semi-articulated.
In each case, boiler, firebox and cab rest on steam
bogies, each of which has its own engine and cylinders. The principal
problem to be solved was to ensure that steam joints were kept tight and for
this reason compounding was the exception for such machines.
Meyer Locomotives - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meyer_locomotive
The original Meyer locomotives have both sets of cylinders
located at the centre. The biggest user of Meyers was the Royal Saxon
Railways (Königlich Sächsische Staats-Eisenbahn) who ordered them in
quantity from Hartmann in
Chemnitz for both the standard gauge (compound) and 750mm narrow gauge
(simple). See http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A4chsische_IV_K
for a list of surviving Saxon Meyers.
Enthusiasts will be most familiar with the latter which
survive(d) in the former East Germany. They owe their long life not
just to sound design and original construction but also to a rebuilding programme
in the 1960s carried out at Görlitz. In fact little if any of the original
locomotives is thought to have survived, the term 'rebuilding' being
used as a programme to build new steam locomotives to a 70 year old
design would never have been accepted by the powers that be!
I visited the Oschatz - Mugueln - Kemmlitz line
while it was still just real on 17th February 1994 although the
locomotive was now lettered for the Döllnitzbahn as the line had been
privatised the previous December. I was blessed with a
beautiful cold sunny day...
A
standard gauge Saxon Meyer (98.001) is preserved at the Chemnitz
Industrial Museum (not Dresden as I mistakenly suggested earlier).
The remarkable Rhätische Bahn Steamblower is
a Meyer, you can read James
Waite's report of a 2009 visit.
A
number of 'Kitson-Meyer' locomotives were built mainly by Kitsons of
Leeds - Wiener confusingly calls them 'Meyer-Kitsons'!. Some had
cylinders at the rear of each bogie, others had cylinders at the outer
ends of each bogie. Some one hundred were built and most ended up in
South America. The last active example worked on the Taltal Railway in
Chile into the 1970s and it survives in preservation at Taltal:
A number of Kitson-Meyer 0-8-6-0T rack
(and adhesion) locomotive were supplied to the Transandine Railways
and two survive in Chile.
This picture of 3349 at the railway museum
in Santiago is from Bill Longley-Cross. It was built in Leeds in 1909 and modified (front rack unit and cylinders removed) at Los Andes in 1914. Front bogie is adhesion (balance weights on axles) whilst rear unit is the rack (balance weights on the rack axles and not the wheel ones).
This is 3348 at Los Andes - picture by Ian Thomson.
Of the half dozen Kitson Meyers supplied to the FCAB, John
Middleton reported that parts of all of them survived in the famous
graveyard at Uyuni in Bolivia in 2008:
In the UK, Bagnalls built a number of 'Modified Meyers'
for the narrow gauge, the last of them, 'Monarch' (762mm, 2' 6" gauge),
is preserved on the Welshpool and Llanfair Railway in Wales, James Waite
photographed it on display at Welshpool in September 2009.
One of six such locomotive supplied
to sugar estates in Natal, South Africa survives at the Cripple Creek
and Victor Railroad in Colorado where it was photographed by Derek
Rayner (new pictures 15th October 2017). It is said to be either 3014 or 3015 of
1953. There are several pictures of this type on this wonderful website, a
real treasure trove - http://steam-locomotives-south-africa.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/miscellaneous-cane-tramway-images.html.
Double Fairlies see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairlie
These locomotives would usually have a single
firebox mounted between two boilers which meant that driver and
firemen were physically separated. The two sets of cylinders would be
placed at the outer ends of the bogies.
Perhaps the best known of these locomotives are
those on the Festiniog Railway in Wales, UK. Of those on the railway
now, most of them are massively rebuilt or newly built - mainly to a
slightly larger scale compared to the original designs for operational
reasons. The only one which is in more or less 'as built' appearance
is 'Livingstone Thompson', seen here 'at home' although normally it is
to be found on display in the National Railway Museum in York.
The above picture and those below were all taken by
James Waite on 15th October 2005. These other two Fairlies are 'Merddin
Emrys' and 'David Lloyd George', the former is in the darker red
livery.
The "Earl of Merioneth" entered service in
1979 to howls of derision from traditionalists who objected to its
sloping angular tanks. I have to say it does look better from a
distance - as in this 1982 picture arriving in Blaenau Ffestiniog:
This kind of locomotive had a chequered record
elsewhere, one example, 'Josephine' is preserved at the Early Settlers
Museum in Dunedin, South Island, New Zealand - photographers would
perhaps appreciate non-reflecting glass...
This metre gauge
example is preserved at Obersheinsdorf in Germany - April 2001 photograph is by
James Waite. See http://www.heinsdorfergrund-vogtland.de/inhalte/gemeinde_heinsdorfergrund/_inhalt/vereine/rollbockverein/oeffnungszeiten/oeffnungszeiten
Pechot Bourdon Locomotives
These were essentially narrow gauge
Double Fairlies and were built in some numbers
for service in World War 1. Two survive, one was in the Dresden
Transport Museum where James Waite photographed it in April 2011:
The second picture shows it at the Frankfurter
Feldbahn Museum in December 2019 where it is on loan.
The other is at Pozega Railway Museum in Serbia. Known as 'Kostolac'
this 0-4-4-0T was built in 1917, probably by Baldwin, 610 mm (2'
0") gauge, for the French military and is one of two of these
locomotives which found their way, probably in about 1941, from France to
Kostolac. It ran on the 610mm gauge line from the old pit at Kostolac to a wharf on the River Danube which closed in the
1960s. The two
Pechot-Bourdons probably stopped running soon after the end of the World
War 2, no-one seems to have seen a picture of them at work, this is
James Waite's picture.
Du Bousquet Locomotives - http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/bousquet/bousquet.htm
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_Bousquet_locomotive
and http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r095.html.
These were compound
locomotives with cylinders on the inside of the bogies, superficially
similar to Meyers although the draw gear was attached to the frame, the
water tanks were on one of the bogies and they had an additional
non-driving axle which reduced the cylinder overhang. The frame was
supported by the rear bogie on a flat pivot and a spherical pivot on the
front. The high pressure steam pipe passed through the pivot of the rear
bogie where movement was limited. They saw service in France, Spain and
(!) China. As far as I know none survives.
Modified Fairlie Locomotives
-
These were a few
locomotives were built by North British in Glasgow to counter Beyer
Peacock's successful (Beyer-) Garratt design, also Henschel in Germany. The arrangement of water
tank, boiler and bunker was similar to a standard Garratt but in this
case all were mounted on the frame. As far as I know none survives. For
pictures of three classes of these locomotives built for South African
Railways, please see http://www.sarsteam.co.za (link not available 21st
October 2013),
an excellent source of data and drawings for all SAR steam locomotives.
Golwé Locomotives - see http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/articult/articult.htm
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golwe
In another variant, just the coal bunker was carried on
the main frame with the water tank (U shaped) carried on the rear bogie.
Deliveries were restricted to the French colonies of West Africa and none
has survived. In this case the front bogie is carried under the boiler and
in this respect these locomotives were more like Meyers.
Beyer Garratt Locomotives - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garratt
and ../beyergarrattlocos/index.html
(updated 30th June 2023 for probably the best web coverage of any articulated steam locomotive type.
The latter includes a list of locomotives built, (and those surviving) as
well as numerous, particularly historical, pictures the latter albeit in a
somewhat chaotic state. Trevor Heath has now established a Facebook page covering the working and under restoration
Garratts around the world - https://www.facebook.com/groups/205647329774286/
(28th January 2016). A 2014/2019/2021 list is available
on this site for those (like me) who decline to use Facebook, (updated
1st January 2021), similarly a
list for 2021/22 (22nd December 2021) and another
for 2022/23 (updated 20th March 2023).
Garratt locomotives have two well spaced bogies on which
are mounted the water tank (front) and fuel bunker / water tank (rear) with
the boiler and firebox on a connecting frame. This arrangement allows the
latter components to be far larger for any particular loading gauge than
their conventional counterparts. Garratts found particular favour on
difficult mountainous lines with (potentially) heavy traffic especially on
those built with a gauge of less than standard. These tended to carry with
them low axle loads and high curvature, conditions which often demanded
articulated locomotives. Although the Garratt design was most associated
with the British company, Beyer Peacock, many such locomotives were built by
European builders although these too tended to be ordered for outside
Europe. The second link above states that of over 1600 of
these locomotives built, some 250 survive, but the figure is misleading
because many are dumped in remoter parts of the world in varying states of
disrepair, especially in southern Africa. If the wrecks in South Africa,
Angola, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Bolivia were to be stripped out of this total,
those with a semi-assured long term future would probably number rather less
than 100. Real working Garratts are still to be found in Zimbabwe in small
numbers but it seems likely they have now finished in neighbouring Botswana.
As they tend to be BIG locomotives, they are expensive to operate in
preservation sites where only the narrow gauge versions are regularly used.
Of the survivors, by far the majority are the larger locomotives of
gauges other than standard and this severely limits the possibilities for
active preservation by relocation - exceptionally Cape Gauge (1067mm, 3'
6") gauge examples have been sold from Southern Africa to New Zealand.
However, this is less of a problem with narrow gauge examples. This
is probably the newest Garratt in the world, turned out in 2006 - see a
report on this site.
Note the less usual inward facing cylinders, a feature found in the very
earliest Garratts, but unlike them it is not a compound.
For a long time Puffing Billy's G42
was the only serviceable
Garratt in Australasia, this is Frank Stamford's picture from 22nd September
2013 (added 25th September 2013). It has now been joined by AD 60 class 6029 in Canberra (http://blog.project6029.com/),
the picture is by Graeme Stanley via Trevor Heath (2nd June 2015).
These have now been joined by regauged South
African Railways NGG 129 seen here during steam testing in late 2019.
Locomotives designed by committees were rarely successful
and the Australian Standard Garrett was just one such example. Considering
how unsatisfactory it was considered, it is amazing that one survived, that
being an example (G33) sold into industrial service as Portland Cement Works Fyansford railway
#3. It is now at the Bellarine Railway (see below for David
Price's May 2013 pictures at Queenscliff) and it is planned to restore it at
Laker's Siding over the next couple of years. Another former Fyansford Garratt, #2 (Beyer Peacock 6935 of 1929, 2-6-0+0-6-2
Garratt), formerly on the Puffing Billy railway will be evaluated for
possible restoration in the fairly near future (all this 25th March 2014).
I
have assembled a set of galleries of Garratt locomotives which survived into
my own gricing history (ie the last 40 - 50 years), covering those countries
which feature most on these web pages - ie Asia and most of Africa. It is
necessarily very selective.
Union Garratt Locomotives
These were, in effect, a hybrid Fairlie and Garratt
with the rear bunker attached to the frame instead of being carried on
the rear bogie. A few were built for South Africa, were not a great
success and the concept was not perpetuated. As far as I know none survives.
This picture appears on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Garratt_Lokomotive_Baureihe_U_s%C3%BCdafrikanische_Eisenbahn.jpg
- the copyright information is incomplete, this image may have to be
withdrawn, I do not know the source for the scan. It's a Maffei built
South African Railways U class.
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