I've been on my travels again over the last week and spent a few days in Glasgow on a training course. This left me plenty of time to go visit some of the Scottish locations and ride a few Scottish branch lines. Main 'Big Game' I was after were two South African Railways locos that had returned to the U'K after retirement. The mighty GMA Garratt no 4112 was built in 1957 by the North British Locomotive co. under sub contract from Beyer Peacock as Works No. 27770 and all the class had been retired by 1988 and 4112 returned and was put on display at the Summerlee museum of Scottish industrial life. Very poorly displayed and not in the nest of condition it really need a makeover Its sheer bulk is still impressive though even though it is only 3 ft 6 inch gauge and as a 4-8-2+2-8-4 t weighed in at 191 tonnes when set up in GMAM form That fence is a complete pain in the ####! Also badly displayed but in much better condition was the equally impressive 15F 4-8-2 SAR #3007. one of 255 put into service from 1938 onwards it was North British works number 25546 of 1945 and was returned to Scotland in 2006 and now lives in the Riverside museum in Glasgow again, badly displayed for photography, as are the other steam locomotives here the museum has some quite eccentric ideas on how to display exhibits. most of the automobiles are hung in mid air off the walls. Weird! Again for a 3 ft 6 inch gauge loco it is very impressive with a combined loco and tender weight of 182 tonnes. More in a mo
Quite a few steam locos have returned to these shores over the years and the first one I got was the Rhodesian Railways 4-8-0 no 390. This was built for the Cape Government railway in 1896 by Sharp Stewarts in Glasgow and in later life found itself working at the Zambesi sawmills. The famous railway artist David Shepherd brought it back to England and it has moved around the country to various locations before being donated to the National railway museum. I first caught it at the East Somerset Railway when me and the missus were on our honeymoon When I visited Locomotion, the NRM outpost at Shildon, it had been cosmetically restored Also at Shildon is the 2 ft 6 inch gauge 2-6-2T no 14 of the Sierra Leone Railway built by Hunslet in 1954 as works no. 3815. Quite a contrast in size to the first two locos! Next on the list of locos to do are the current residents of the Manchester museum of Science and Industry A Beyer Peacock built Garratt for the SAR and a former Pakistan Railways 5 ft 6 inch 4-40 I'll update in a few weeks Kev
back in the eighties I actually started to make a 3 1/2" gauge 15F. The castings were from the 1950s and made by a firm in England called craftsmanship models. This was going to be a big model! in effect, with it being a narrow gauge prototype, it was the equivalent to a large 5" model and was going to finish up about 6 feet lone when complete The chassis was fully equalised like the prototype and these are big cylinders One of the members of the West Riding club had a completed one for comparison I sold it eventually, preety much in this state, as the gauge 1 exhibition layouts were taking up all my modelling time but would still like to know if it ever got finished Garratts in action can be found at Kev
Near the end, it looked like the lead locomotive had a maintenance problem and was being pushed as dead weight. But it made wonderful stack talk from #2 as worked its heart out pulling a heavy train by itself, plus pushing #1. Interesting to see that both locomotives shared a single water bottle. Thanks
Were these all built from a design originated in the UK? Or to specifications of their foreign owners?
Beyer Peacock took up Herbert Garratt's idea after it had been rejected by other manufacturers and in one form or another they were built from 1907 to about 1952. They came in all shapes and sizes depending on the needs of the customer. We are lucky to still have a Colliery railway 0-4-0+0-4-0 survivor in the country and the very first one built, which is a small narrow gauge (1 ft 1 1/2 inch) example built for the Tasmanian railway, has been fully restored and now works on the Welsh Highland Tourist line in Wales Loads of info at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garratt Kev
Thanks for that very interesting compilation of steam, Kev. Interesting "repatriated" steam. Garratts are very unusual to us USA folks, but as someone else posted, I sure would like to witness one running in person.
Awesome stuff... These units should deserve to be overhauled in running condition and have a few hundred yards of 3'6" gauge track in order to stretch their rods... Dom
