This popped up on Flickr today...
An interesting proposal, to say the least. I think that the provided coal storage might be inadequate.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/124446949@N06/30647743458/in/feed
I'm thinking CPR in the mountains and on the rugged East Coast through New Brunswick.
What a beast. Someone build one!!!
Trains had a feature article on these in the early Seventies. (There was an amusing picture elsewhere in that issue showing the locomotive negotiating double crossovers!)
Note that these are not extravagant or large locomotives by North American standards; they have the same rigid-wheelbase advantage over eight- or ten-coupled Garratts that a 4-6-6-4 would have over a 4-8-4 or 2-10-4, and that as I recall was what Beyer-Peacock thought the principal advantage of the idea would be.
A true double Garratt built to North American clearances and standards would have been a far bigger (and more interesting) thing!
Four sets of drivers? Looks interesting as hell, it'd be a gas if someone built one, but somehow I feel the ghost of the Erie "Triplex" is there in the shadows muttering "Yeah, they thought I'd have been the 'Cat's Pajamas' too!"
Four sets of drivers suggests that this fireman's nightmare would run out of steam about as fast as Virginian's Triplex.
CSSHEGEWISCHFour sets of drivers suggests that this fireman's nightmare would run out of steam about as fast as Virginian's Triplex.
Why?
Do four-cylinder British locomotives 'run out of steam' twice as fast as two-cylinder ones?
The four cylinders on the Garratt proposals are 'rightsized' for the expected mass flow (itself only about 1/6 greater than a 2-10-2 + 2-10-2 Garratt, which various people have proposed). Remember that the very large radiant and convection sections made possible by the Garratt design are much, much better than the (relatively pathetic) boilers fitted to the Triplexes (and some of the Santa Fe early articulateds that were also, shall we say, thermodynamically impaired, or the Southern locomotives with tender boosters). Designers did learn something in the intervening 30+ years. Knowledge about front ends and drafting improved, too.
My guess is that this was pitched at markets like Java or Sumatra, which could accommodate 12-coupled power but would rather have short coupled wheelbase.
Now, I grant you this is a shopman's nightmare, a bit like the T1 with 'twice as many' pistons, valves, motion parts, reverse arrangements, etc. to be checked and accommodated. I don't remember if these were designed (as some Garratts were) to have the engine units easily separated for maintenance.
Well if the boiler was big enough, and if there was enough drafting capability, and if there was an automatic stoking system (since firemen with a build like King Kong are in short supply) theoretically it might just have worked.
However, the fact that it was proposed and there weren't any takers makes me wonder about the viability of the concept. But hey, who knows?
perhaps this will be of interest?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRbwr0H5nME
Overmod Trains had a feature article on these in the early Seventies. (There was an amusing picture elsewhere in that issue showing the locomotive negotiating double crossovers!)
Been going through the TRAINS cd collection and there is an article in the Feb 1973 issue, Stillborn Steam Centipede. I do not find the image in it, although I remember seeing it. It must be in a different issue, or maybe Model Railroader of the era.
I also remember seeing that sketch, it may have been in Second Section. The sketch showed the coal bunkers with shark noses, not unlike a T1 or an RF16.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.