Garratts - Why Not Cab Forward

It occurred to me when looking at the adverts for the new Hattons N Gauge LMS Garrett, why do Garretts always run Chimney first?

While you would still have to look over the rear bunker/water tank why was it never attempted to build a 'cab forward' Garrett. The drivers view would be 'less worse' than looking towards the chimney and the crew would be less affected by smoke in tunnels.

 

It’s Garrats. Garretts were a make of steam road locomotive.
My experience of South African steam is that Garratts didn’t always run chimney first.

 

Agree a lot of my fotos are cab first, and tunnels were extremely rare where these locos were deployed, the principle was to make best use of relatively lightly laid lines and bridges that followed the contours to avoid expense such as tunnels.

 

I think the LMS Garratts ran cab first as much, if not more than, chimney first.

 

The WHR Garratts obviously spend as much time running cab first as boiler first, but I seem to recall hearing somewhere that running cab first out of Porthmadog is preferred because it means cab first whilst working uphill through the tunnels for the reasons suggested above.

I suspect that the idea that Garratts mainly worked boiler first may only be an impression - possibly there are more photos showing them boiler first as the photographers prefer them that way. For them to be turned would probably require the use of triangles - I certainly can't think of any British turntables being long enough - so I would imagine that most worked equally both ways.

Steve B

 

I think the general preference in South Africa was for running cab first whenever possible, for precisely the reason of smoke in tunnels and forward visibility. A lot of pictures of GMAs, GEAs and the like have them running cab first over routes like the Lootsberg pass, and I believe it was also preferred with the most powerful of them all, the GLs.

Conversely, in East Africa I believe the crews liked to run the big class 59s chimney first. Of course, with anything as long as a Garratt having a preferred direction does depend on having adequate turning facilities. Otherwise, they have to be designed to be relatively easy to operate in both directions anyway.

 

Some Garratts, particularly the AD60's in New South Wales were fitted with due controls for cab first running and DC is displaying alongside the number to those locomotive so fitted. the operational 6029 is one of those, though I'm not sure the rear facing controls were re-connected during restoration

 

you might want to edit that

 

Can see that a Forward cab and the Controls rear facing in the main cab would be useful on the bigger ones, but the forward cab would be the wrong side of an articulation which would make the control linkages pretty complex...

 

Didn't the Southern Pacific in the USA have some cab forward articulated?

 

If they are mallets its a slightly different thing, both cabs are still on the main chassis/ boiler part of the loco ( like a double fairlie)

 

There may well be a typo with the amount of “t” letters involved but where articulated steam locos are concerned, it’s most definitely Garratt.

 

They did indeed. At least one is preserved.

 

Only one, regrettably. It's to be found, stuffed and mounted, in Sacramento Ca:


(Image courtesy Wikipedia)

While we're about it, any objections to a totally gratuitous plug for the Californian State Railroad Museum? ..... Tough! .... here's their url:
https://www.californiarailroad.museum

 

The EAR ones had to cope with a lot of very long and steep climbs, but few or possibly no tunnels. I suppose boiler up hill has se advantages for keeping the firebox crown covered, although on this line there was steep climbing in both directions, at least west of Nairobi. The big 59 class only operated east of Nairobi where the climbing was all in one direction.
In all the pictures I can find, the EAR ones are working chimney first. As you say, hard to know if this is photography bias or was real operational preference, but I suspect the latter as I can't find any photos of cab first.
The EAR had triangles for turning.

 

Garratt country in South Africa wasn't exactly flat. Some amazing climbs in Natal for example..

 

True.
In these contexts I think the gradient profile of the EAR is worth restating:

(Compared to the WCML)

 

Do I recognise that there diagram from Dusty Durrant's tome on bendy things? A jolly good read.

 

That or one like it. I'm afraid I can't remember, or I would have given the reference.

 

it's an eye opener away! Are those lines still open? even with diesel it would be memorable!