A lot of chatter about Garratt Locomotives over on the Trains Forum but perhaps better suited here in Classic.
If anyone wants to copy and paste over to either of two threads in Steam and Preservation feel free to do so, or direct interested parties to come over here. Crisis over!
I may have aleady recounted my visits to South Africe, (First visit having the great privilege and luck of sitting next to old friend Alexander Hamilton III on the SAA flight from Kennedy, stopping at some Island for refuling then Johannesburg, 14 hour flight, and a visit to Pretoria's Capitol Park Engine Sheds, and the one time so far that I actually ran a steam locomotive, a 4-6-0 used to switfch the Blue Train, and painted Blue.
But I did also get to see a Garratt. Did not belong to South African Railways, but to Rhodesian Railways, and was in Pretoria for a major overhaul.
I hope I took a picture and can find it, if not right away. It is possible the Forman told me not to photograph it because of some political reason. (Although the project I was working on, Sun City, in Bophutatswana, was very thoroughly intergrated, there was still Apartheid in South Africa, but Rhodesia was ruled by its Black majority.)
I'm glad to know examples are preserved in running condition. Maybe some day long from now, if I live that long, I'll get to see one again and even ride behind one.
If econmics had been kinder to the D&RGW-RGS-D&SP 3-ft gauge network, we might have seen USA examples.
DSP&P might have been a real possibility since they were already familiar with articulation through the Mason Bogies.
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