Hi,
This model belongs to a friend of mine, another avid Marklin fan. He always wanted a Garratt and eventually found this one, built around two P8 chassis. They were such an icon in Queensland Rail history although not without fault I believe. I lived close to the end of a street where the main north coast line ran from Brisbane and there was a gradient at that point. I saw lots of other steam locos slipping and need a push from the railway yards closeby, but I never saw a Garratt slip. All I can remember were these giant red locos with gold bands, lots of noise and grit in my eyes!

This model was built using two P8 Hamo chassis one of which was insulated at the pivot point from the rest of the train. As one chassis ran in the reverse to the other, then the non insulated wheels on each chassis were used to pick up current from the two rails. There were no pickups fitted to the insulated wheels so the chassis were simply wired together and a slider pick up fitted.

The body work was in very good shape but the mechanicals were a bit agricultural. It had one motor fitted (which only just worked) and the second chassis had the complete motor with magnet and field piece but no rotor. We decided to strip the model, redo the pivots and mechanicals, fit a second rotor and re-wire it completely. The insulated pivot was discarded. At this time I fitted an ESU decoder which went nicely into the cab. The amount of debris and black junk that came out with a Shellite wash was amazing. When it was finished, I didn't want to give it back!

New bits top, old below.

Not a good photo. A bit of milling was done to make a level pivot plate.

Some rewiring . Channels milled in one of the pivot plates to embed the wires.

The Garratts used in Qld were 4-8-2+2-8-4 pattern but this was immaterial as far as we were concerned. Other wheel arrangements were found world wide.
Short video. Sorry for the age tremor.
Thanks,
Howard.

Edited by moderator 22 February 2016 13:11:10(UTC)  | Reason: Merged both topics that had been opened.

Hi John,
No sorry but there would be some on the internet. Attached is a photo of a photo I took in the eighties of a Garratt I painted for someone and it was also made on Marklin chassis but I don't know which steamer was used. The wheel arrangement was correct. NSW had 4-8-4+4-8-4 I think but I am not a whiz on 1:1 railway. Qld had the lovely red with gold striping ones.

Regards,
Howard.

Me too

Hello again Howard,


I once more enjoyed your post.

You may be interested to note that Garratts first appeared in Australia in Tasmania, by commission of the Tasmanian Government.

See my post number 15 at : https://www.marklin-user...ire31-07-2015#post463162

Regards,

PJ

This is the Queensland Garratt, in maroon livery, photo by R N Redman

Hi Howard,

Thank you for the pictures. A very impressive locomotive.

The German manufacture SCHNABEL showed these Garratts in his 1960s catalogue. He used parts of TP800 and TT800.



Regards

Markus

Here's the one at Thirlmere

That has one big mother of a tender on it. Larger than most other B-G locos appear to have.