Mr. Bachmann and Mr. Riley,
This would be cool to have one of these!
And for the rest of us, the charm of foreign narrow gauge power.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub9icEOhcSQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub9icEOhcSQ)
A small Garrett like the one in the video would be sweet!
Bill in FL
Small?! These garratts are the biggest steam engines on 2ft gauge in the world.
Hi Max,
Perhaps, but as Garratts go, they're still pretty small. Personally, for On30, I would prefer a two-foot gauge prototype rather than a 3 foot gauge prototype. I have a Bachmann 4-6-0, and for On30, that thing's a monster!
Bill in FL
While I would like to see any narrow gauge Garratt done, I think the Tasmanian K-1 Garratt, which is also at WHR, would fit in better with the size of the Shay, the Climax, the 2-6-6-2 and the forthcoming Heisler, as it is a very small loco.
RGS Goose.
The K1, while very pretty, is awfully distinctive. Beyer only made two and after that all Garratts had the cylinders outboard on the power bogies, rather than inboard. With the NG16s they also are very distinctive and too much associated with one place for me. If I want a loco it's because it fits in with where my rr is in place and era and what its purpose is. Trying to figure out a convincing account of how the chief engineer snaffled K1 out of Tasmania or had the money to get a state of the art NG16 would tax my creative abilities!
I would go for a machine a little less distinctive, like the Darjeeling Garrat http://sundar.brinkster.net/Dhr.jpg
or G42 on the Puffing Billy Rly or something from the Sierra leone Rly like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SLGR_No_50.jpg
There is this I found which is a neat idea. It's an old shay converted to a Garratt/Kitson-Meyer http://narrowmind.railfan.net/Shay-Kitson-Meyer-Oestes.jpg shame it doesn't show the other side so we can see if the old cylinders were left in place or how (if!)they balanced the offset boiler.
Not worth a new post, but I am intrigued to find that Bachmann's 2-6-6-2 is not only a Central American protoype http://narrowmind.railfan.net/2662_Serbian.JPG
Serbia!
Only major difference I can see is the Serbian machines have slightly larger boilers.
For those who need a "creative" reason for obtain any Garratt, my preference being a NG-16, is you won it playing a high stakes poker game! ;D
Doesn't work for me. I mean, unless you have a handful of precedents where chief engineers/owners won their line a nice new loco :o
Besides, aesthetically I don't much like the NG16 and prefer Garratts with outboard cylinders
But if you absolutely must have an On30 NG16 or K1, Backwoods Miniatures makes kits of both
I'd love a class NGG16 or a class NG 15 (2-8-2) from Bachmann! There's too much 'top notch brass' on the market which by association limits the interest for the On30 scale, I think there are new market segments to win worldwide with a broader prototype choice. There's no other manufacturer that I'm aware of in the Bachmann caliber today.
I live in northern europe, and buys Bachmann stuff and bashes it to something prototype-free but plausible for my concerns. I'd love to be able to buy australian, african, european and chinese prototype On30-stuff, and I believe there's markets otherwhere for that too. A chinese class C2 or even better a class SN steam engine would be great, for instance! I understand the importance of the US market and that it decides what could be done or not, but I still think that one who has the manufacturing resources in place today could develop other markets as well. To open a new 'world prototype' market, I believe a pre-sale arrangement in conjuntion with retailers worldwide would be possible and hopefully a nice surprise for the market dept at Bachmann! ;)