Big Urge - Garratt!

Ste,

Contact the Museum of Science in Manchester. They have an archive of most of the General Arrangement drawings from Beyer-Peacock and can supply them as large prints or on CD. The plan on CD costs about £20 and the prints are a good bit more expensive - £30 or more. The email contact address is snipped-for-privacy@msim.org.uk and they do reply quite promptly to enquiries by email.

I got a CD copy of a plan of a Garratt and the quality was good, with good definition and quite good clarity of the lettering of dimensions, etc. The image was a 8779 x 4119 JPG file.

I think it helps if you can quote as many details as possible to make sure you get the correct drawing - like the B-G works number, or the date of building, etc.

Jim.

Thanks mate - emailed just now!

What drawings do you get? Just the elevations or more detailed sub assembly projections too?

Guess I'll find out but they could fit a lot on a CD!

Cheers

Steve

Ste,

The drawing I got was of the Western Australia Garratt of 1912. this was the first 'main line' Garratt (albeit 3' 6" gauge), the earlier prototypes being narrow gauge versions for Tasmania.

The drawing had side and top elevations with various sections to show 'hidden' detail. An end elevation or cross sections would have been handy but you can deduce a fair amount from the other two elevations, and can get the rest from photographs. I did only ask for a GA of the loco, so there could have been further drawings - at £20 a pop, I had to draw the line somewhere :-).

I have been fortunate in getting some excellent pictures of a similar prototype from a modeller in Australia, and I might be able to get some pictures of the actual loco which still exists, but is not accessible at the moment.

Jim.

They came back to me, they said they have six drawings, becuase the engine is so big they split it over six drawings, so the full loco would be 120 quid - a bit steep!

Steve

Ouch!! Can't you get a batch discount? :-) I must admit that I thought they might have had a sort of sliding scale for requests for multiple drawings where the setting up to do the work could be apportioned across the number of copies and the cost per drawing reduced. Do they have one GA drawing on one sheet? If they have, that might well be of sufficient detail to allow you to model quite accurately.

Maybe someone else knows if there is an alternative source of B-G drawings which might not be as costly.

Jim.

I might just build it from the one photograph I have! I was a total rivet counter in my modelling days, totally sad! In the end the impossibilty of 100% accuracy drove into the world of football, beer and women!

Now I'm more arty than technical, for feel than slide rule. It's just for fun anyway, then I'm off back to Russia to find the orginal, prolly scrapped but who knows, I saw live steam in Russia when I thought they'd abandoned it. And there was a huge streamlined 4-8-4 on a plinth in Cheliabinsk station - very impressive!

Steve

Steve wrote:-

Why not model Strelnikov's Train from Dr Zhivago?

(kim)

I was under the impression that the railway scenes were filmed in Spain and Finland. The Finnish loco was a Russian-built Su 2-6-2 IIRC, but I'm fairly sure that the armoured train was built for the production in Spain.

There might have been something in the technical press at the time it was built. Railway Gazette, Railway Magazine or similar might have had an article with some plans.

Or the tram!

The WAGR M and Ms class double Mogul Garratts were all built by Beyer Peacock before the First World War. In 1930 the WAGR Midland works built the similar Msa class. Perhaps it might be possible to get drawings etc. from Western Australia. Regards, Bill.

This link may be of help to you:

HTH