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Overview

The first Garratt locomotive, K1, one of two gauge Tasmanian Government Railways K class locomotives built in 1909, has this wheel arrangement and has been restored to operating condition at the Welsh Highland Railway. This arrangement proved one of the less popular Garratt types, since most Garratt locomotives were larger and more powerful, requiring more pairs of driving wheels to operate within the normal axle load limits, and because leading wheels gave more stability and better tracking to allow higher speeds.

In total, 34 Garratts of this type were constructed, seven by Garratt patent holder Beyer, Peacock & Company, mostly for industrial use, and 27 by other builders. The largest user of the type was the C.F. Vicinaux du Mayumbe in the Belgian Congo, with twenty locomotives built to a gauge by St Leonard in Belgium.

Use

Argentina

The gauge Southern Fuegian Railway (F.C.A.F.) in Argentina procured a new Garratt in 1994. Based on Livio Dante Porta's work, it included larger cross section tubing, insulation of the boiler and an improved front end. This vastly improved the economy of this modern steam engine and more than doubled train length.

Accordingly, a second Garratt for this railway was built to similar specifications, but with superheating added, in the workshops of Girdlestone Rail in Port Shepstone, South Africa. It was shipped to Argentina in 2006 and entered service in October of that year. These locomotives had their engine units arranged face-to-face.

Australia

The Tasmanian Government Railways K class was the first class of Garratt locomotive ever produced. They differed from most later Garratts in two respects.

• They were compound locomotives, with two high-pressure cylinders on the rear engine unit and two larger low-pressure cylinders on the front engine unit.
• Their engine units were arranged with their cylinders facing each other, rather than back-to-back as on most other Garratts.

United Kingdom

In addition to K1 at the Welsh Highland Railway, the standard gauge industrial Beyer-Garratt William Francis, built in 1937, is preserved at the Bressingham Steam Museum.{{Cite web |access-date=1 August 2025

References

References

1. {{Garratt Builders B
2. {{Garratt Builders O
3. "The End of the World Train - Tierra del Fuego National Park - Engineer Porta".
4. "The End of the World Train - Tierra del Fuego National Park - Engineer Zubieta".
5. Turner, Jim. (1997). "Australian Steam Locomotives 1896-1958". Kangaroo Press.
6. Oberg, Leon. (2010). "Locomotives of Australia 1850s-2010". Rosenberg Publishing.
7. [http://www.whrsoc.org.uk/WHRProject/k1.htm K1 The World's First Garratt] (Accessed on 27 October 2016)
8. ''Steam Locomotives of the Tasmanian Government Railways and its Constituents.'' [[Australian Railway History]], issue 917, March 2014, p. 19.