Since you're undoubtedly the only person at this site who's ever actually done work on a Garratt, we'll have to defer to you, but I wonder if that was true of all Garratts or just those SAR NGG16's? It certainly should have been possible to remove the front tank (rather than the whole engine unit) to accomplish it.

Garratts--no problem, either. The tank easily pops off the engine unit, and the engine units come off the boiler frame like a diesel truck. For the increase in boiler efficiency gained from having a boiler and firebox unencumbered by drivers (the whole point behind the design), that's a minor inconvenience at best.

I happen to have a stack of Beyer-Peacock Magazines in the basement, from the height of the Beyer-Garratt era, awaiting shipment to the Railway Society of South Africa (along with 450+ pounds of other periodicals and books). If you wish to analyse these ideas further, I have "original source" material, so to speak......

Superheater, the info I have indicates that Garratt pursued, and secured, a licencing arrangement with BLW ca. 1910, very early in the development of the concept and long before Beyer, Peacock exploited the concept to its fullest following Garratt's death in 1913 and the expiry of the patent in 1928. I'm fairly certain that by the time an American Garratt would have been competitive with Mallets in the U.S., BLW had abandoned any pretence of building Garratts, or that B-P didn't want to work with BLW re: licencing.

Same clip, dude. Which did you forget to link to?

According to Dusty Durrant's book "Garratt Locomotives of the World", Beyer-Peacock was also working on the Mallet-Garratt, also known as a "Super Garratt" and actually licensed ALCO to produce these locomotives. Unfortunately, those never got off the drawing board.

Here's a drawing of a proposed 2-6-6-2+2-6-6-2 from Gavin Hamilton's Garratt pages:



While people tend to lump the Mallet Garratt in with triplexes (which didn't work) and some of Baldwin's even crazier ideas, the Mallet Garratt would have had much better boiler/firebox/cylinder volume proportions and all the engine exhaust would have gone up the stack (rather than only 1/2 on the triplex), so they would likely have been much more successful locomotives.

Sorry about that, folks. In my Garratt-induced frenzy, I posted the same link twice above.

Here's the one I meant to post, showing the Garratts coming off the branch from the mine at Fassifern and crossing over before starting up the bank. Watch the lead engine articulate through the crossover!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O22dS7JbAHQ

I'm obviously not the only one, and not the best either, since Sandy has found a way to remove them very easily and quickly. Perhaps he'll show us how he does it some time. I found it cumbersome and uncomfortable, but my work was only on a 2 footer with nothing but hand tools, so.......little room anywhere and no way to move anything easily. I could certainly be wrongly assuming the bigger ones would be even heavier and more cumbersome, even if more roomy.

I admire them for all the reasons stated: very generous firebox and boiler capacity, and flexibility. Sure could have used them on our narrow gage and logging lines.

dave

My experiance of NGG 16's was that heavy overhauls where engine units out. Some boiler work and foundation ring work boilers where jacked up in cradles. It was possible to get super heaters out with the front tank on. Generally barrels of boilers where short so tube lengths could be acomerdated within the tank cutout section which in any case had to be large enough for the door to open.

It will be nice to see 6029 going soon.
I wish one of the Algirian stream lined ones with Poppet? Valve gear was still around.

I've spent a little time on Garratt's in the past ten years or so.

See here http://www.trevorheath.com/livesteaming ... rratts.htm

and hope to do so again in the next five.

Main Line Steam in New Zealand is this year to start restoration of their GMA/M in Auckland. We shall try and spend a year there.

We also intend to visit Canberra in the next twelve months. Preparing for retirement, I've unfortunately I've not been able to help with that project except to send an annual donation towards materiel's. Money for piston rings is urgently required (hint hint).

As others have stated, removal of the front water tank to properly access the smoke box is a quick and simple task on any Garratt.

TH