Giants of Steam

by Jonathan Glancey

  The future British prime minister and war leader was not exaggerating. Maasai tribesmen massacred five hundred railway workers after the rape of two girls. During the construction of a bridge across the Tsavo river in 1898, a pair of male lions killed at least twenty-eight African and Indian labourers. The ‘Man-Eaters of Tsavo’ were eventually shot by Lieutenant Colonel John Henry, the engineer in charge of building the bridge, who made their skins into rugs which he sold for $5,000 a piece in Chicago. At Mackinnon Road, a small lowland town between Mombasa and Voi, trains still pass a lineside mosque where travellers stop to visit the tomb of Seyyid Baghali, a Punjabi foreman who had been working on the construction of the railway before being eaten by a lion. (At the time that the 59 class Garratts were arriving in Mombasa from Manchester, Mackinnon Road was best known for its detention camp, where Mau Mau soldiers and suspects, fighting against the British and fellow Kenyans, were held during the uprising of 1952–60.)

  The railway was amalgamated with Tanganyika Railways in 1948 to form the East African Railways and Harbours Administration. A big-engine policy was adopted almost immediately, spearheaded by William Ellerington Bulman, a former GWR engineer, who had also worked with the Canadian Pacific, and rose to become chief mechanical engineer of the East African Railways. ‘He was one of the old generation CMEs who could walk around his drawing office and comment with experience on almost any detail under way,’ recalled A. E. ‘Dusty’ Durrant, a young engineer who left Swindon for Nairobi in 1955. ‘When in a good mood he would regale us with his experience in the Canadian Rockies, where double-headed and banked 2-10-2s and 2-10-4s clawed over the Great Divide with never an anxious moment on steaming capacity.’

  Bulman collaborated closely with Beyer Peacock on the design of his masterpiece, the 59 class, travelling to the company’s Gorton works to obtain exactly what he wanted. He was assistant chief mechanical engineer at the time and the design of the 59s was carried out under the overall direction of G. Gibson, the East African Railways’ chief mechanical engineer. Bulman insisted, for example, on a 7 ft 6 in rather than a 7 ft 0 in boiler; he wanted maximum steam production for maximum power output. And brilliant performers though these locomotives were, Bulman wanted even more power. He and his engineers worked on design proposals for a far bigger engine, the 61 class 4-8-2 + 2-8-4 Garratt with a tractive effort of 115,000 lb but a much heavier axle load than the 59s. The boilers of the 61s, pressed to 250 psi, would have had a diameter of no less than 8 ft 6 in. Durrant, meanwhile, went even further and outlined a 4-12-2 + 2-12-4 with the same axle loading as a class 59 and a tractive effort of 125,000 lb.

  These machines would have been the most powerful steam locomotives outside the United States. The 59s, however, proved able, especially when fitted from 1959 with Giesl ejector exhausts, to handle everything then required by the East African Railways, and so they were eventually succeeded not by bigger Garratts, but by diesel-electrics. On test, a Giesl-fitted 59 hauled a 1,200 ton train up the 1-in-66 gradient from Nairobi to Uplands 33 per cent faster than a 59 with a single blast-pipe, which burned 15 per cent more oil.

  Up until the end, in 1980, the 59s were cherished by all who had a hand in their working. The best-kept member of the class was 5918 Mount Gelai (since preserved), whose regular crew worked the red Garratt for sixteen unbroken years. According to Colin Garratt, a particularly well-travelled railway photographer: ‘Her cab interior is more akin to a Sikh temple than a locomotive footplate for its boiler face abounds in polished brasswork, embellished with mirrors, clocks, silver buckets, and a linoleum floor.’ Indeed, one of her regular drivers, Kirpal Singh Sandhu, who died in 2010, had a bar fitted in his home in Mombasa made from components from the cab of a retired 59. It was a happy sight and proof of just how well loved these remarkable locomotives were.

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  Virtually everywhere they ran, in fact, Garratts were to prove extremely popular. These articulated engines were invented by Herbert William Garratt, who began his career as a steam locomotive engineer at the Bow works of the North London Railway, before moving to marine engineering in Sunderland and then back to locomotives. He worked in Argentina, Cuba, and Peru before resettling in London in 1906. It was while observing horse-drawn carriages in motion that Garratt had the idea for an articulated locomotive which would align itself freely to swing through sharp curves like no other. A boiler and fire-box were to be carried on a girder frame pivoted above fore and aft engine units. This layout allowed for large boilers with wide and deep fire-boxes, unrestricted by the presence of axles. It was a brilliant idea, effectively two locomotives in one, and ideal for lines with restricted axle loading. Beyer Peacock took up Garratt’s 1907 patent with little enthusiasm but were eventually to build a total of 1,023 Garratts for fifty-six railways in thirty-six countries.

  The first Garratt was one of a pair of 2 ft gauge 0-4-0 + 0-4-0s built in 1909 for the Tasmanian government’s North East Dundas Tramway; the Garratts worked the line successfully until it closed in 1929. The last Garratts, built by Hunslet-Taylor in Germiston, South Africa, after the closure of Beyer Peacock, was an NG16 class 2-6-2 + 2-6-2 built in 1968 for the 2 ft gauge lines of South African Railways. Happily, both these historic locomotives are at work today on the Welsh Highland Railway, a glorious 25 mile line, completed in 2011, which steams through Snowdonia between Caernarfon and Porthmadog.

  Between these poles, Garratts were built for service in many parts of the world, but perhaps most notably in Africa. The most remarkable, and unexpected, were the twenty-nine 231-132BT 4-6-2 + 2-6-4 express passenger Garratts built at Raismes, in northern France, between 1936 and 1941 by the Société Franco-Belge de Matériel de Chemins de Fer, in association with Beyer Peacock, for the Algerian railways, operated first by the PLM and then by the state-owned Chemins de Fer Algériens. These semi-streamlined machines, weighing 212.6 tons, were to feature double PLM-type exhausts, electrically controlled Cossart drop-piston valve gear, mechanical stokers, and a boiler pressure of 284 psi. Their starting tractive effort was 66,000 lb. Their 1.8 m (5 ft 10¾ in) driving wheels were the largest of any Garratt.

  These striking machines were complex and yet peerless in terms of performance when carefully serviced and maintained. On test in France between Paris and Calais, an Algerian driver had the massive locomotive spinning along at 132 kph (82 mph) between La Falaise and Ailly-sur-Noye, and generating 3,000 dbhp on the climb to the summit at Survilliers. This was the highest speed ever recorded by a Garratt – or, indeed, by any other articulated steam locomotive, including the Union Pacific Challengers and Big Boys. The Algerian Garratt was capable of developing 3,600 ihp for extended periods.

  In Algiers, and taking over from ex-PLM 4-6-0s, these locomotives accelerated the principal Algiers–Oran passenger trains by two hours from 1937; the run of 422 kilometres (262 miles), with a train of 450 tons, making nineteen intermediate stops, was now made in seven hours. This demanded rapid acceleration and spells of running at 120 kph (74.5 mph). The relative complexity of their design, along with the effects of poor local water, proved to be the Achilles heel of these otherwise exceptional machines; denied the care they needed in wartime and the years following, they were retired in 1951 after what, for a Garratt, was a very short life. Sadly, none survives.

  The British experience of Garratts was far less satisfactory. This had nothing to do with the inherent qualities of the Beyer Peacock locomotives, but was a consequence of interference by the LMS motive power superintendent, J. E. Anderson. The LMS took delivery of thirty-three four-cylinder 2-6-0 + 0-6-2 Garratts between 1927 and 1930. They worked heavy coal trains for the most part, over the Midland main line from Toton (Nottingham) to Brent (London). Unfortunately, Anderson had insisted on changes to the design, with the result that the engines were beset by wholly unnecessary problems, including inadequately sized and poorly lubricated axle boxes, and short-lap, short-travel piston valves. The Garratts nonetheless did much hard work, replacing pairs of 4F class 0-6-0s on heavy coa
l trains. They survived until 1958, but were little loved. The only other main-line British Garratt was one built at Gorton with Nigel Gresley in 1925; the solitary six-cylinder U1 2-8-0 + 0-8-2 was used for banking heavy coal trains up 1-in-40 inclines in south Yorkshire; it was retired in 1955.

  The one design for a Garratt that could have truly helped the LMS was a six-cylinder express passenger compound 4-6-2 + 2-6-4 Garratt, with 6 ft 9 in driving wheels, worked up as a very convincing proposal by Beyer Peacock in 1930. In all probability it would have been a great success, but when William Stanier came to the LMS from Swindon with a powerful four-cylinder Pacific in mind, the express Garratt was dropped. Beyer Peacock did try once more, with a proposal made to British Railways in 1949 for a four-cylinder 4-6-2 + 2-6-4, with 5 ft 9 in driving wheels, for use in Scotland. It never got beyond the drawing board, partly because at the time there was only one train daily – the Perth–Inverness sleeper – that weighed more than a single Stanier class 5 4-6-0 could manage.

  No, the Garratt’s great stamping ground was Africa. Even today – certainly in 2011 – a handful of Garratts, returned to service in 2004– 5, can be seen at work now and again around Bulawayo in Zimbabwe, though whether Garratt-hauled trains to Victoria Falls will ever return remains to be seen.

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  There were, of course, interesting locomotive developments in various outposts – advanced, developing, and remote – of the steam world. Other countries – Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Japan among them – created impressive and much-admired machines which often operated in demanding or downright inhospitable terrain, but the majority of steam locomotives built for or by them were, as ever, heavily influenced by British, American, German, and sometimes, especially in terms of thermodynamics, French experience. None, however, demanded the high steam-cycle efficiency achieved by the likes of Chapelon in France, or the sustained high speeds that characterized the steam railways of Britain and the United States. Indeed, many steam locomotives served railways that for any number of reasons – political, economic, geographic, the nature and quality of local fuel supplies – were unable to work trains at great speeds. It was often impossible to commission or build extremely powerful locomotives because of track conditions and axle-loading limits. These were considerations that applied to even the most ambitious countries. I was certainly thrilled to see a Japanese National Railways C62 class two-cylinder 4-6-4 in action at the head of a special train in the early 1990s. My immediate impressions were of a miniature version of a US Hudson and of the dense and voluminous clouds of thick black smoke trailing behind what was otherwise a delightful machine.

  In fact, the C62 class was, marginally, the most powerful and fastest steam locomotive to serve Japan’s railways and, despite some distinctive local design details, it really was an American Hudson at heart. With its disc wheels, powerful headlamps, and haunting chime whistles, the C62 could be nothing else. The thick black smoke was caused by poor-quality local coal. The low calorific value of Japanese coal was one reason why Japanese steam was limited in terms of power output; the other was a 15 ton maximum axle loading. The C62s, of which forty-nine were built between 1947 and 1949 by Hitachi, Kawasaki, and Kisha Seizo Kaisha, were metre-gauge locomotives and weighed no more than 88.8 tons. With their 520 × 660 mm (20½ × 26 in) cylinders, 228 psi boiler pressure, and 1.75 m (5 ft 9 in) driving wheels, they developed a starting tractive effort of 30,690 lb. They were rated at 1,620 ihp and were limited to a top speed of 100 kph (62 mph), although on 15 December 1964, C62 17 2 was worked up to 129 kph (80 mph) on the Tōkaidō main line, a record for Japanese steam.

  It was that same year that the revolutionary standard-gauge Shinkansen ‘Bullet Train’ expresses came into service between Tokyo and Osaka. Intelligently, the Japanese made the transition straight from 100 kph steam expresses, which, given their limited dimensions and poor fuel, did their job as well as could be expected, to ultra-fast electrics running on dedicated new lines and capable of 130 mph. This quantum leap in railway engineering and operating made Japan’s railways equal best in the world, along with those of France. Ironically, the Shinkansen project had begun in 1955, the year of British Railways’ misjudged Modernization Plan. The Japanese had not run down steam as the British had done, but replaced well-maintained steam only when the new high-speed electric railways were ready. Even then, some of the Hudsons were transferred to Hokkaido, Japan’s north island, where, often double-headed, they worked boat trains over the heavily inclined Otaru to Oshamanbe line until 1973, providing a most captivating sight and sound in winter snow.

  Significantly, one of the key designers of the C62s, working at the end of the Second World War, with Colonel Howard G. Hill, an American military locomotive engineer, was Hideo Shima. Born in Osaka and trained in engineering at Tokyo Imperial University, Shima worked his way up in the railways; in 1955 he was appointed to lead the design development of the Shinkansen trains. He went on to become head of Japan’s National Space Development Agency and an expert in hydrogen-powered rockets. But Shima never lost his love of steam. He simply progressed from 100 kph steam to 210 kph electrics to 40,000 kph space rockets. Each had its place in engineering and economic development. Steam was neither to be looked down on nor despised.

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  It was elsewhere, though, in Malaysia, that steam was to be developed along the kind of sophisticated lines rarely found outside Europe. The locomotives in question were the fascinating O class, three-cylinder Pacifics designed by Hugh Murton Le Fleming, a Cambridge-educated and Swindon-trained engineer who was chief draughtsman and then assistant chief mechanical engineer on the Federated Malay States Railways.

  Laid lightly through the jungles, the first section of what was then Malaya’s 860 mile metre-gauge railway had opened in 1885; it reached Singapore in 1923 and was completed by 1931. Its locomotives needed to be light, yet powerful, in order to manage steep gradients and sharp curves. Its first Pacifics, built by Kitson and Company in Hunslet, Leeds, were delivered in 1907, a year before Churchward unveiled The Great Bear at Swindon. The O class was developed to haul passenger and mail trains along the length of the railway’s west coast route and to run on the east coast line. Working with the North British Locomotive Company, Le Fleming produced the first of twenty-six three-cylinder O class Pacifics – later designated classes 56.1, 56.2, and 56.3 – in 1938–9, followed by forty more class 56.4s in 1945–6. For the period, these were notably advanced engines, with bar frames, nickel-steel boilers, welded-steel fire-boxes, reliable Lentz rotary-cam poppet valves, thermic siphons, and roller bearings. Everything was done to keep weight to a minimum, given the railway’s governing axle loading of just 12.75 tons. The locomotives were fitted with boilers pressed to 250 psi, 12½ × 24 in (later enlarged to 13 × 24 in) cylinders and 4 ft 6 in driving wheels. Tractive effort was 23,940 lb. Normally, these three-cylinder Pacifics were limited to 50 mph, although they could run freely at between 60 and 70 mph, and perhaps a little more when given their head. Excellent steamers and reliable locomotives, they survived the brutal Japanese occupation of Malaya in the early 1940s and attacks on the railways by communist insurgents during the 1950s. Forty were still in service at the end of steam in Malaysia in 1974.

  One of these remarkable engines – 564.36 Temerloh – was restored at Sentul works, Kuala Lumpur, in 1996, on the initiative of the enthusiastic ex-chief mechanical engineer, Dalip Singh, and for a memorable, if all too brief, period she powered a regular Peninsular Line mail train between Gemas and Tampin. Painted royal blue, the Pacific made a splendid sight. To many who came from abroad to ride behind her in handsomely renovated and luxurious carriages, this highly sophisticated, lightweight, three-cylinder Pacific was a revelation. Machines like this were a rarity in tropical countries, and yet a part of what makes steam railways so fascinating is just this kind of experience of the unexpected. In this instance, the experience was captured by the artistry of Hugh Le Fleming, who was a talented painter as well as locomotive engin
eer, and the posters he designed for the Federated Malay States Railways in the 1930s were both colourful and enticing – almost inevitably, they feature a passing steam locomotive as well as lush tropical countryside. A notable book with ninety-two of his paintings of locomotives from around the world, with descriptions by A. E. ‘Dusty’ Durrant, was published by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1972 – although sadly, the original paintings, donated to the IME by his widow, were stolen and have never been traced.

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  The particular mechanical artistry of the steam locomotives that once clawed their way through jungles and over mountains in the southern hemisphere, or powered massive coal trains across the plains and valleys of central Europe, has not been entirely lost; it lives on in the imagination of subsequent generations of enthusiasts and engineers. And yet many of the world’s modern steam locomotives owed a debt not just to the Stephensons, Chapelon, and ‘Hot Steam Willy’ Schmidt, or to the common sense and engineering might of manufacturers in the United States, but to the engineers of one small European country which, although all too often overlooked, made a major contribution to steam railway locomotive development. This was Belgium, one of the first countries on the European continent to build railways; the first, in 1835, ran the twenty kilometres (12.5 miles) from Brussels to Mechelen (Malines).

  One of the country’s most distinguished locomotive engineers was Egide Walschaerts, who started work as a mechanic on the state railway, which then owned only a part of the network, at Mechelen, and became workshop foreman at Brussels in 1844. That year, a patent in Walschaerts’s name was taken out for new system of steam distribution for locomotives. This was first applied to a series of 2-2-2s built by Malines Arsenal and Cockerill in 1854–5. Applied sparingly in Belgium, it was taken up with increasing enthusiasm in the USA, especially after 1900, at the very end of Walschaerts’s life – not least for its simplicity compared to other systems, and its reliability. It later became the most commonly used of all valve gears.