Mike,

I have sent your message of thanks to the group. "oztrainz" (John Garaty) is one of ours too. The Ausnarrowgroup have developed the discussion into a debate about Garratts per se. You can view the posts at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ausnarrowgauge/messages the subject = "Garratt Loco on a Jigsaw". Your original request has stirred up quite a bit of interest down here.

Thanks Rod! That was a fascinating read at the yahoo site. I imagine that their are avid Garratt followers from all over! :up: :up:

For those of you that would like a ready to run model in standard gauge HO one is available.

An Australian company Eureka Models have produced a RTR plastic model of the New South railways AD60 class garratt.

You can see more including a history and photo's of the prototype here

http://eurekamodels.com.au/Garratt.html

Just remember the prices are in Aussie dollars. Take off about 20% for a US dollar price

Regards

Murray Scholz

visit my model railway at

http://bogongandgeehi.blogspot.com/ and see more narrow gauge garratts

Hi Mike, one thing that hasn't come up was gauge - these locomotives are running on 3'6" gauge track. If it is a GMA class Garratt in the jigsaw, it has a 4-8-2+2-8-4 wheel arrangement with 4'6" diameter driving wheels and it was rated at 68800lb tractive effort at 85% cutoff and had a grate area of 63.5 sq feet. The Garrats are are huge units, but even they are dwarfed by the 25 Class 4-8-4's that were originally built as condensing steam locos with tenders that were longer than the engine units for service in the Karoo desert. They were later rebuilt as non-condensing units (25NC Class). The statistics for these locos are equally impressive - 51400 lb tractive effort from 5' diameter driving wheels and a grate area of 70 sq feet. These figures would be similar to many large standard-gauge steam locos used in the US and Canada.

If you are interested a book about the majesty of in steam in the South Africa countryside, I would recommend "The Great Steam Trek" by CP Lewis and AA Jorgenson. 1978 published by C Struik (Cape Town). The copy I have is from 1981. It is a large format book of about 250 pages. Your best shot may be through inter-library loan or similar.

Regards, John Garaty

Unanderra in Oz

Thank you so much Joh for all the information and the "heads up" on the book. I'll have to do a search to see where I can locate it! Indeed, the Garratts are truly impressive "beasts"! :up: :up:

hi there to you all.

the first loco is a 19d number 2749 and the second is a gmam number 4122 from south african railways .the photo was taken between george and oudtshoorn in the western cape .the 19d was painted blue because she was used to shunt the blue train in capitalpark

Thank you so much for the information, Andre! It was a while ago that I did that puzzle. It's a beauty for sure!