Beyer - Garratt locomotive
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jdcrawler
Joined: Apr 4, 2011
Topics: 46 Replies: 65
Topics: 46
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Thought I would like to build a model of a Garratt locomotive next so I went searching for some photos of them on the internet.
Being mostly ignorant of equipment used on railroads in foreign countries, I had thought that this type of locomotive was only used in Great Britain and that they only made one style of this locomotive.
Boy .. was I in for a surprise .....
I quickly realized that the Beyer-Garratt steam locomotive was used all over Europe and some of them are still in regular use in Australia and Africa.
They were built as small as a wheel arrangement of 0-4-0 + 0-4-0 all the way up to 4-8-2 + 2-8-4.
Here are a few photos starting with the smaller locomotives and going to the bigger ones.
They also show up in a variety of colors.
Some photos of a couple of the locomotive that are still in operation.
SO .... after spending some time looking at photos of them and seeing some of them running on Youtube, I started digging up parts to start building my model and this is what I have to start with.
These are parts of two European 0-6-0 locomotives that are plastic models made by Pola Maxi in Germany.
They are suppose to look like this but my two models have seen better days.
I'm going to build a 0-6-0 + 0-6-0 so I stripped the two models down to the basic chassis by removing the side rods and valve linkage and the steam cylinders.
The steam cylinders are the wrong design and the side rods and valve linkage are all plastic so I'm not going to use these parts.
The Garratt locomotive has a front and rear set of drive wheels with the water tank sitting over the front set of wheels and the coal tender is over the rear set of wheels.
The boiler is mounted on a carriage frame work that is hung between the two sets of drive wheels.
Each set of drive wheels has the steam cylinders at the far end of the chassis and it pivots at the other end where the boiler is mounted over the end set of wheels.
The first problem that I see is the electric motors on the plastic models is in the cab with the steam cylinders at the front.
I can't make the pivot mount for the boiler carriage on the opposite end from the cylinders because the electric motors are there.
So I need to mount the steam cylinders on the end with the electric motor so it will be hidden inside the water tank and the coal tender and the carriage for the boiler can then pivot on the other end of the two chassis units.
( Whew ... I hope that wasn't too confusing ? )
Back to my old standby of parts for building plastic locomotives, I'm milling the top off a steam cylinder from the Rivarossi 0-8-0 locomotive kit.
The tops are milled off both steam cylinders and I'm gluing a piece of styrene on top of them.
The individual parts are shown in the foreground and the piece of styrene is clamped onto the cylinder in the back ground, waiting for the glue to dry.
The next problem is the plastic models have the center drive wheels connected to the steam cylinders and the Garratt locomotives have the far end drive wheels connected to the steam cylinders so I need to switch the wheels.
The crank pin and eccentric lever are made from plastic on the model so I have to make new crank pins out of steel rod for the rear drive wheels.
The steel crank pins are made up and pressed into the drive wheels.
The center wheels and the end wheels have been switched and the crank pins are pressed into the end drive wheels.
The other two pairs of wheels have the crank pin hole threaded so I can screw a small shoulder screw into them to hold the side rods in place.
So far .. I have a pair of 0-6-0 chassis units, steam cylinders that will fit them now, brass valve linkage ( That I think I can make work ) and the main rods for the steam cylinders.
I wasn't able to find any side rods in my parts that will fit the wheel spread on these two chassis.
So I'm going to machine the side rods out of some strips of brass.
The side rods are finished and mounted on the two chassis.
The steam cylinder is mounted on the end of the chassis with two small screws and the electric motor is set in place.
The main rod is set into the guides on the cylinders and on the crank pin to see how everything fits.
The top of the chassis frame on these drive unites sits about 1/4 inch higher than the top of the frames for the 0-8-0 locomotive kit.
I had to mill out the underside of the steam cylinders where they sit on the top of the frame so that the cylinders sit down low enough to line up with the wheels.
So the support for the cross head guide rails has to be milled out so that it sits lower on the frame also.
The support on the left is the stock unit and the modified support is on the right.
The two little white blocks on each side is where the holes were drilled for fastening this to the front of the valve linkage frame with two small screws.
The front part of the brass valve linkage assembly has to be shortened in order for the front linkage arms to reach up to the steam cylinders and the rear linkage arms to fit back to the rear wheel.
The stock brass valve linkage assembly is on the left with the stock cross head guide support in front of it.
The shortened valve linkage assembly is on the right with the modified cross head guide support attached to the front of it.
Seeing as how the steam cylinder and guide support had to be lowered for them to fit .. you would think that I would have realized right away that the valve linkage is probably going to have to be lowered also ....
Well I didn't think about that until I had everything assembled on the chassis and got right down at eye level to take this photo.
It was then that I saw that the pivot point at the end of the front linkage arms is still sitting higher then the slide bracket on the upper part of the steam cylinders.
This pivot point on the front linkage arms is suppose to rest in the pocket of the slide bracket on the cylinders.
Oh well ... I'll chalk this one up to brain fade and go on from here . ......
I took the brass valve linkage assembly all apart so I could reassemble it with the side frames upside down.
With everything put back together, the pivot point of the front linkage arms now fits snugly into the pocket of the slide bracket on the steam cylinders like it is suppose to.
The valve linkage assembly with the cross head guide support mounted to the front of it is attached to the top of the chassis with two screws.
A matching pair of drive chassis's.
I have left the electric motor off the chassis unit so I can rotate the wheels by hand to make sure that everything works correctly and they won't be put back on until after everything is painted and the locomotive is assembled for the last time.
I'm going to use this frame and floor piece from the tender of the Rivarossi 0-8-0 locomotive kit to build the carriage frame that is mounted in between the two drive units and carries the boiler.
The two parts are clamped together while the glue dries.
Then I milled off the parts for the brake system.
A piece of styrene is mounted on the end of each of the drive units and a counter-bored hole is machined into them for the pivot point with a brass ring set into each of pivot holes.
A round boss is glued onto each end of the underside of the carriage frame that will fit into the counter-bored pivot holes.
Styrene is glued onto the top of the carriage to bring it out to the correct width.
The carriage frame is set on the drive units.
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jdcrawler
Joined: Apr 4, 2011
Topics: 46 Replies: 65
Topics: 46
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I'm making a support girder for each side of the carriage frame out of brass.
The top one is finished and I still have some pieces to add to the bottom one yet.
They are then both fastened to the sides of the carriage frame.
The boiler is being made from a piece of PVC pipe and the end is machined so the smoke box front fits snugly.
Small holes are hand drilled around the outside diameter of the smoke box.
Once they are all drilled, small brass nails are pressed into them to represent the rivets around the boiler.
Thin strips of styrene are wrapped around the boiler for the boiler bands and the other items are added to it to complete the boiler.
I have a cast brass piece for the back head of the firebox and I've soldered a piece of brass strip to the back of it.
This forms the firebox for inside the cab.
The plastic cab that was on the 0-6-0 engines that I'm using for the drive units, was too narrow so I'm using this pot-metal and brass cab instead.
There are two small rectangle windows on the front of the cab but the boiler sticks out past the lower corner of each of these two windows so I need to make a piece that will fit into the lower corner of each of these windows.
The windows have an inset area around them so I took a piece of brass and machined the top of it to match the inset of the windows.
Then I formed a thin strip of brass over it.
This thin strip of brass fits at an angle into the lower corner of the window.
The windows now have an angle shape at the bottom corners so the windows clear the side of the boiler.
These parts are all assembled to complete the boiler so far.
The pipes and air compressor are added to the boiler.
The water tank is mounted on the drive unit that is in front of the boiler
I'm going to make the water tank for my model from these parts from the tender of the Rivarossi 0-8-0 kit.
One tender side panel from the 0-8-0 kit is shown at the top.
I've taken a left and right side panel and trimmed the bottom frame rail off them and then cut them in half.
Two of the half panels well be used to make the water tank and the other two half panels will be used to make the tender for this model.
The sides and ends of the tender kit are rounded at the corners where they fit together and they are joined at a 45 degree joint in the center of the corner radius.
There isn't any easy way I can duplicate that rounded corner with all the rivet detail on the other end.
So, on the ends where I cut the panels in half, I'm machining them at a 45 degree angle so there will be a nice square corner on that end instead of having the cut edge of the panel showing.
The two sides and one end panel from the kit are glued together like they were designed to be joined.
Then the piece for the other end is glued in place.
The top panel of the tender kit is also cut in half and I'm using it to keep everything aligned and square.
Both of the drive units have a power reverse cylinder mounted on top of the valve linkage.
The lower part of the this side of the water tank is milled out to clear the power reverse cylinder.
You can see that I have cut out a piece of 1/4 inch thick plexiglass for the floor in this tank.
The tank is mounted in place on the drive unit and I've added a footplate made out of a piece of plastic with the diamond plate tread pattern in it.
The edge of the footplate is cut at an angle on each side to allow clearance for the drive unit to rotate as it goes around a corner.
Here the boiler and drive units are set on my curved test track to check for clearance between the edge of the footplate and the front of the boiler frame.
The cutout for over the reverse cylinder is closed in on two sides and a piece of plastic with a diamond tread pattern is glued on for the top.
The other side of the tank has a smaller cutout area to clear the valve linkage.
Next, I need to make steps for each side of the tank.
Here I'm machining a piece of square plastic tube that will be the top step.
I'm using tender steps from another train model kit and the steps that I made from the square plastic tube are glued to the top of each one.
The step that goes on the side with the reverse cylinder is longer than the step for the other side.
The square strip of plastic glued on one side of each step is to provide a place to attach the bottom mount of a hand rail on each side and it also gives them more strength.
The two steps are then glued to the underside of the water tank.
The front drive unit with everything mounted on it so far.
Not all of the drive rods and valve linkage is mounted on it yet.
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Balto&NY
Joined: Jul 30, 2011
Topics: 76 Replies: 131
Topics: 76
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An amazing piece of model work there! Can hardly wait to see the completed loco.
Ed B
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jdcrawler
Joined: Apr 4, 2011
Topics: 46 Replies: 65
Topics: 46
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Thank you Ed.
I'm working on the rest of it now.
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jdcrawler
Joined: Apr 4, 2011
Topics: 46 Replies: 65
Topics: 46
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The other two half side pieces from the 0-8-0 kit are used for building the coal tender that is on the rear power unit.
The two sides and the rear panel are glued together.
The front panel with the coal access doors is glued on and the 1/4 inch thick plexiglass floor is glued in place on the tender body.
The other half of the top panel with the opening for loading the coal is cut to size.
The parts for extending the height of the opening for the coal are glued together and the piece of ' coal ' is cut to fit into the top of the opening.
The cut out areas, for clearance on the sides of the tender body for the valve linkage and the power reverse cylinder, are milled out and the covers for them are made and glued in place.
The platform is also glued to the front of the tender body.
These are the finished parts for the coal tender.
This is how the tender looks when all the parts are assembled
On the front, the steps were attached to the sides of the water tank.
For the rear, the steps are mounted to the sides of the platform at the rear of the cab.
I'm using a pair of brass castings for the steps and they are attached to the brass side frames for the locomotive cradle.
A square post is also attached to the side frame for mounting the upper part of the hand rail on rear side of the steps.
The upper part of the hand rail on the other side of the steps will be attached to the side of the cab.
The top frame has the step and hand rail post soldered to it and the lower frame shows the individual parts to be assembled yet.
Here the second frame assembly is being soldered together on the back side of the frame.
This is how they look when mounted back on the locomotive cradle.
This completes all of the individual parts for this locomotive and it is taken all apart so the parts can be painted.
The painting took some time but it is finally finished.
Progress: