jlancasterd Posted January 25, 2009 Share #1 Posted January 25, 2009 Advertisement (gone after registration) The Ffestiniog Railway's Boston Lodge Works has just finished rebuilding a third NG/G16 Garratt locomotive for the Welsh Highland Railway. When received the locomotive was in scrap yard condition missing most of its non-ferrous parts and with a lot of the steelwork in poor condition. Large parts of the boiler had to be replaced and many other pieces, such as a new coal bunker, had to be fabricated. The rebuild took two years and cost £500,000. The locomotive was originally built for the two-foot gauge lines of South African Railways and worked in Natal until the 1980s. Today it was being shunted around Harbour Station in Porthmadog by the FR's big diesel, to make sure that it would go round the various sharp curves, for when it goes into service on passenger trains between Port and Caernarfon after the final part of the WHR is reopened later this year. Thankfully there were no problems... :) The grey paintwork is what used to be known as 'photographic livery' which was applied to the first example of a new class of locomotives so that the official photographer could get a good shot of it for publicity purposes - almost certainly using a view camera and orthochromatic plates. R8+DMR+21-35mm Vario-Elmar-R, developed in Lightroom. [ATTACH]124213[/ATTACH] Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted January 25, 2009 Posted January 25, 2009 Hi jlancasterd, Take a look here Fresh out of the box.... I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
moikle Posted January 25, 2009 Share #2 Posted January 25, 2009 That is a real beauty! Mike Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
elansprint72 Posted January 25, 2009 Share #3 Posted January 25, 2009 John, Writing apart it looks like it just rolled out of Gorton Tank. With the articulation I would have thought it could handle anything Welsh curves could throw at it. Look forward to seeing it in action. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlancasterd Posted January 25, 2009 Author Share #4 Posted January 25, 2009 John,Writing apart it looks like it just rolled out of Gorton Tank. With the articulation I would have thought it could handle anything Welsh curves could throw at it. Look forward to seeing it in action. Thanks Pete! Actually, this one never went anywhere near Gorton Tank. Unlike our other three examples of the NG/G16 (two already working, one awaiting attention), which are all from the final Beyer Peacock batch of 1957, this one is from an earlier order, built by John Cockerill of Seraing, Belgium in 1936. It is however, something of a mongrel, having acquired a Henschel boiler from yet another batch at some stage in its career... There are detail differences, but it is essentially the same design as the Gorton-built locos. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stuny Posted January 25, 2009 Share #5 Posted January 25, 2009 John - She is a beauty, and your angle, detail, light and color show her off very well. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andit Posted January 26, 2009 Share #6 Posted January 26, 2009 Hi john, If it worked in Natal on the 2 foot gauge, it was probably part of what was known as the Banana Express. This railway used to run through the banana growing areas and used to collect the harvest from the farms. Lovely image, thanks for showing. Andreas Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlancasterd Posted January 26, 2009 Author Share #7 Posted January 26, 2009 Advertisement (gone after registration) Hi john, If it worked in Natal on the 2 foot gauge, it was probably part of what was known as the Banana Express. This railway used to run through the banana growing areas and used to collect the harvest from the farms. Lovely image, thanks for showing. Andreas Hi Andreas According to the WHR website (see NGG16 Garratt no. 87) No.87 worked on both the line out of Port Shepstone to Harding and, latterly, the Donnybrook-Umzinto line. It was withdrawn when the Donnybrook line closed after the disastrous floods in the 1980s. The FR got all of the rail, steel sleepers and fastenings for the early phases of the WHR reinstatement from undamaged sections of the Donnybrook line - it had been relaid only a couple of years before the floods and was in excellent condition. We also 'by accident' acquired a number of large bogie open wagons which were used as containers for the sleepers and fastenings when the material was shipped from South Africa to UK. After a modicum of maintenance, the wagons are proving very useful for carrying locomotive coal on both the WHR and FR. Incidentally it's a Hanomag (not Henschel) boiler from an earlier NGG13 Garratt of 1927 that is currently on No.87. There were 34 NGG16s (and 11 of the similar NGG13s) and components for such large number of almost identical locomotives would have been 'pooled' and swapped as necessary at overhauls. There would also have been several spare boilers, used to reduce the time that locomotives spent under heavy repair, so it would be unlikely that a locomotive would still have its original boiler after the first 10 years or so. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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