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I finally got around to doing some building. I've been doing a bit of
tossing around in my mind a Beyer-Garratt after seeing the My Own Train
engines. I've also been figuring out what passenger cars I will be
making as I've been collecting train doors. I've got a 7740, 7815, and
7819, and a club car in the red/yellow color scheme, and will be adding
cars to this. So then I was trying to figure out a good locomotive to go
with my 7715 and 7710 color scheme cars I will be building (I don't like
shorties, so I will be building some cars following 7740 instructions).
I decided the Beyer-Garratt would look best in red and blue so set out
to do that. The first step was some research and I found a few
interesting web sites (on one I even found plans for a Beyer-Garratt
Climax - what an interesting combination). One web site had an index of
articles in Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazzette which I subscribe to so
I dug out the issue with an article on a Beyer-Garratt in the
March/April 1995 issue.
I decided on a basic 0-6-0+0-6-0 Beyer-Garratt using 12v motors (my 2nd
7735 and my 7745 gave up their motors to the cause). Some quick fiddling
determined that a 2x2 tile with Technic pin would make a good mount when
stuck at the end of a train motor. For the boiler, I started with 8
castle wall corners and some half octagonal plates.
Last night I got the basic engine finished, but this morning I decided I
needed a better fire box so I rebuilt the boiler. I also decided that
with a larger fire box, I would have room for a 12v lamp to simulate the
fire under the boiler. I replaced the 6x16 plate I used for a frame with
a 6x16 plate with motor hole. This gave me the space to get the 12v
wiring up from the motor. The new firebox is 6x6 studs. The boiler and
upper portion of the firebox attach to the frame by more 2x2 tiles with
Technic pin (sadly I only have two in black - I need to find more in
black). The front of the boiler has a 1x2 Technic beam to serve as the
hinge point, while the rear hinge point is in the cabin floor. I may
need to re-work this a little so the frame goes the whole length of the
boiler because the boiler will separate from the frame a bit.
I had an early re-build of the cab, water tank, and oil tank when I
realized the blue started one brick too high to match the passenger
cars. I may re-build the tanks to allow for 12v lamps for headlight and
back-up light, but it will be hard since each tank conceals two weight
bricks.
One final re-build was to replace the bottom two rows of 3x3 facet
bricks with macaroni so that a 2nd 2x2 tile with Technic pin could be
installed to help hold the boiler and frame together. I like the way
this gives the boiler a bit of taper from the fire box to the front.
This re-build was done after I took most of the pictures, so only the
last picture shows it.
I still need to add some details, but at this point, the locomotive is
ready for service.
I like how tight the whole model is. There is just enough clearance for
the engine to ride a curve. This model was fun to build and I feel
really good about it. It just came together so well and should be
instantly recognizable to anyone with broad knowledge of trains.
You can see the pictures here:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=10911
I gave brief thought to doing the Beyer-Garratt Climax, but one problem
is I don't have a 12v Technic motor to articulate the rods, and 9v train
motors don't have rods (though I played around with the old 70s era rods
and they can be used with 9v train motors, but of course they require
use of the cylinder which would not work for the Climax.
At some point, I may build a 2nd set of motors in 9v for operation on 9v
layouts, but I think the engine would lose a lot without the rods. Of
course the 9v version would also be an 0-4-0+0-4-0.
Here are some of the Beyer-Garratt pages I found useful:
An African Bush Pig with a Saxon Heart (a scratch built model):
http://www.worldrailfans.org/Magazine/2000-03/Ingulungundu.shtml
The Garratt Locomotive (lots of pictures, unfortunately mostly black and
white, has the plans for the Beyer-Garratt Climax):
http://users.powernet.co.uk/hamilton/
Frank
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: New train MOC - 0-6-0+0-6-0 Beyer-Garratt locomotive
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| (...) Nice work, Frank! A 3-axle 9V motor with rods would be soooo nice! I can verify that lack of rods loses a lot (URL) though I didn't spend much time on it. And yes, I know I spelt Garratt wrong - I'll change it when it's easy to change (...) (22 years ago, 28-Jan-02, to lugnet.trains)
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