The Soviet railways’ search for greater freight capacity led to the ordering of a Beyer-Garratt locomotive from Britain. The resulting Ya-01 was described as the largest Garratt in the world and was tested in the Soviet Union during 1933. Robert Humm recounts…
Gorton’s Giant
THE LARGEST GARRATT IN THE WORLD
Soviet railway recovery
BY the late-1920s, the Soviet railways had largely recovered from the ravages of the First World War and the ensuing civil war that followed the Bolshevik revolution. The infrastructure had been in a state of collapse in 1919 with 60 per cent of locomotives out of use and track and buildings in many places lying in ruins.
The all-out industrialisation of the USSR’s economy anticipated by the Soviets’ first ‘Five Year Plan’ (1928-1933) meant that Russia’s vast distances, meagre rail facilities and long stretches of single track were struggling to cope with the greatly-increased demands for freight train capacity. The most expedient solution was to provide powerful locomotives capable of shifting huge trains with a minimum of delay.
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During the 1920s, the frontline freight class in the Soviet Union was the E class 0-10-0 (and its improved successor the Eu) of which 2,724 had been built between 1912 and 1925. They were supported by 1,104 of the unsatisfactory Class Shch 2-8-0s and no fewer than 8,480 classic 19th century Class O outside-cylinder 0-8-0s. There were also 744 modern Ye class 2-10-0s imported from the USA during the Great War.
‘Biggest is best’
The Es were rugged and reliable locomotives of greater power than most contemporary types of non-articulated freight locomotive in Europe, yet they were increasingly having to be double-headed – a wasteful practice at a time of loco and crew shortages. There was an urgent need for freight locomotives more advanced than the E.
Several lines of action developed in parallel, and often at conflict with each other. One was the purchase for evaluation of two batches of five locomotives apiece from the United States – a 2-10-4 from Alco (classified Ta) and a 2-10-2 from Baldwin (classified Tb), but their 23-ton axle-load precluded general usage over most of the system, on which 17 tons was the maximum permitted axle-loading.
Another school of thought took what might be called the Stalinist ‘biggest is best’ approach, which resulted in the construction of the monstrous AA-20-1 class 4-14-4 prototype, which emerged from Lugansk works in 1934. So out of tune was it with the realities of the poor-quality Russian permanent way that it was quietly sidelined after a few trial runs.
So it was that Soviet locomotive engineers began looking towards Great Britain. They were well aware of the rapid development of the Beyer-Garratt locomotive type from its unspectacular beginnings 20 years earlier as a patented design of Herbert Garratt and manufactured exclusively by Beyer Peacock Ltd (BP) in Manchester’s Gorton Works.
Following the delivery of the tiny 0-4-4-0 Garratt, No. K1, to Tasmania in 1909, a total of 343 had been supplied by 1930 to numerous railways all over the world. The latter year was the best ever for Garratt production, no fewer than 90 being delivered from Gorton Foundry.
Soviet reservations
The Garratt, with its unique combination of high power and flexibility, would appear to have been the ideal locomotive for Soviet main line conditions, capable of handling heavy trains over long stretches of lightly-laid and poorly-maintained track without double-heading and at higher speeds than the plodding 15-20mph of the 0-10-0s and 0-8-0s. Yet there were strong reservations within the USSR’s Ministry of Ways & Communications over the purchase of Garratts.
While the Soviet Union was not averse to borrowing ideas from the West, there was a dislike of being dependent upon a patented foreign design requiring large outlays of gold roubles the country could ill afford. In addition, there was the cost of shipment from Britain. Even if an arrangement to assemble BP locos under licence in Russia could be negotiated – which at that time BP was opposed to in principle – the workshops of the USSR were not equipped to build such large locomotives.
Objections of a more technical type were that a Garratt would possess long exposed steam pipes unsuitable for the Russian climate and that it would be too long for the nation’s engine sheds. There was also a belief that Soviet traction problems could be overcome not too far into the future by the development of the main line diesel locomotive – a technology in which the USSR was, at the time, world leader.
The trial order
In spite of those reservations, it was decided in 1930 to order two Garratts on trial – one for the main line and for narrow gauge industrial railways. The order was channelled through Arcos Ltd, the Soviet import-export agency in London. At an advanced stage of negotiation, the Soviet finance ministry, for reasons now lost in the fog of politics, refused to make funds available for the narrow gauge version and that order was cancelled.
The other order first appears in the Beyer Peacock board minutes of May 24, 1932, where the company’s chairman, Sir Sam Fay, reported that “negotiations have been concluded with representatives of the Russian Government”. At the next meeting on June 21, the order was duly recorded as “One Beyer-Garratt locomotive with drawings and spares at a price of £23,750 FOB Birkenhead (that is, inclusive of all costs up to the point of shipment), for delivery December 1932.”
This order must have been highly welcome to BP, for it was facing a severe crisis: From a high point of 189 locomotives of all types delivered in 1930, output had slumped in just a few months to 46 in 1931 and 18 in 1932.
The world’s largest Garratt
The new Garratt, No. Ya-01 (written with a reversed ‘R’ in Cyrillic script) was of the 4-8-2+2-8-4 wheel arrangement and was the largest Garratt in the world. In full working order, it weighed 262.5 tons – no less than 30 tons heavier than the largest previous Garratts (16 Bengal-Nagpur Railway 4-8-0+0-8-4s built in 1929) and a figure not again approached until the Class 59 Garratts of the East African Railways (259 tons) delivered in the 1950s.
Indeed, at the time of delivery, Ya-01 was the heaviest locomotive of any built outside North America. The solitary AA-20-1 4-14-4 already referred to, weighed 208 tons without its 12-wheel tender.
Ya-01 was allocated BP order number 1176 and works number 6737. Some details of the specification still survive in the company archives now deposited at the Greater Manchester Museum of Science & Industry. The photographs hardly give an adequate impression of its size, for the harmony of the design, together with the great height of the chimney permitted by the generous Russian loading gauge, tend to obscure its immense proportions.
Enormous
The height from rail to chimney top was an enormous 17ft 2ins and the other principal dimensions were: total length 109ft; wheelbase 98ft 8ins; coupled wheels 4ft 11ins; four cylinders 22.44in diameter by 27.95in piston stroke driving Walschaerts valve gear; boiler 7ft 7in outside diameter pitched 9ft 10in from rail to centre line; total evaporative surface 3,564ft²; boiler pressure 220lbs psi; firebox volume 600 cubic ft and cab floor 100 sq ft. The tractive effort, calculated at 85 per cent boiler pressure, was 89,200lb and the minimum radius curve that could be traversed was ten chains.
Each of the two engine sections was, in accordance with BP practice, identical in layout. The foundation was a massive bar frame 5in thick braced by cast steel cross members. Each pair of cylinders was cast in two sections and formed the principal stiffening at the outer end of the engine unit. The central frame carrying the 40-ton boiler was built from deep-section steel plate with intermediate cross stiffeners.
Firing was by means of a mechanical stoker, the drive motor of which was located at the rear of the cab. There was provision for hand firing in case of emergency. Coal capacity of the rear bunker was 16 tons. The front tank had a water capacity of 856 cu ft and the rear 450 cu ft.
Protection from the cold
To overcome Soviet objections that Garratt types were unsuitable for working in temperatures as low as −40° C, particular attention was given to the location and insulation of water and steam pipes. Small steam coils were used to warm components likely to be affected by the intense cold and, as far as possible, pipework was positioned under outer shrouding. All steam, water and oil feed pipes were lagged with asbestos cords. Drain cocks were fitted to avoid the accumulation of water likely to freeze when the locomotive had cooled off.
One unexplained hand-written addition to the BP specification was the wording: “The weight of the boiler must NOT be painted on the boiler when it leaves the works.” One commentator has suggested that this was at the insistence of a worried Russian inspector, but equally it might have pre-dated assembly of the loco. What is clear is that the 1933 published weight of 259 tons is three and a half tons less than the 262.5 tons quoted in later books, including the comprehensive official Beyer-Garratt catalogue issued by BP in 1947.
Colossus
Beyer Peacock was naturally keen to impress the purchasers with the quality of the finish and detail of Ya-01. Paintwork was black with a fine red line edging to the water tanks, bunker, cab and main frames. The locomotive class and number were painted on the front and rear bufferbeams and the cabsides, the latter being surmounted by the hammer & sickle emblem universal to all Soviet locomotives. Boiler bands and hand rails were polished stainless steel.
The spacious 100sq ft cab was insulated and lined with varnished hardwood and was completely enclosed against the elements. Roof ventilators and sliding glass windows provided fresh air. Electric cab lighting and upholstered seats provided a level of crew comfort not generally enjoyed by British footplatemen at that time.
After completion, the colossus was hauled into the works yard at Gorton for steaming and hydraulic tests. Official photographs were taken and the loco was then dismantled for shipment. The engine units, water tank, bunker, boiler frame, cab and crated components were conveyed to Birkenhead docks by rail. Because of its out-of-gauge dimensions, the boiler was taken by road on a low-loader wagon behind a traction engine. Shipment was to the Baltic port of Leningrad (now St Petersburg), where Ya-01 was immediately re-assembled and steamed.
Trials in the Soviet Union
It went first to Moscow for examination and then to the Perm Railway, in the Urals, for trials in February and March 1933. On the route between Sverdlovsk, Oofalaya and Chelyabinsk, it was found capable of hauling without difficulty a train of 2,500 tons on a 1-in-100 gradient in a ferociously cold climate of −41° C. The photographs taken during those tests are the only known pictures of Ya-01 at work.
On May 25, 1933, the Garratt went for tests at the Institute of Traction Reconstruction. The science of locomotive-testing in Russia, which dated back to Alexander Borodin in the 1880s, was practised to a greater degree than anywhere else in the world. Under Iuri Lomonosov, it was refined to the point where each locomotive type was issued with a ‘passport’ setting out all aspects of its performance under a wide range of conditions, driving techniques and fuel quality. Much of this work was rigidly theoretical.
A clash of approaches
The arrival of the Garratt clashed with this scientific approach. How could a locomotive whose adhesive weight was constantly changing be issued with a ‘passport’? This immediately created a mood of disfavour in the eyes of the technicians and other reasons then began to be found to condemn “this useless folly”.
It all contrasted with the more empirical British approach to locomotive engineering – “if it works, it works.” Garratts, of course, worked well elsewhere and the variable adhesion factor (which after all applied to every tank engine ever built!) was not especially significant.
It was, I believe, an exasperated Robert Riddles (later BR’s chief mechanical engineer) who, in a conversation with some Russian loco engineers, said: “In my country, locomotives are propelled by steam not by quadratic equations.”
Faint praise
In the end, Ya-01 was damned by faint praise; an article in one of the Soviet technical periodicals said that despite its perceived faults there could well be a limited role for it when new locomotives depots had been built and freight cars had been fitted with couplings strong enough to make such a powerful locomotive worthwhile.
That last comment contained one of the two real reasons for dismissing the Garratt. We have already seen that the USSR possessed insufficient hard currency to purchase a substantial fleet of Garratts. The coupler problem was the other. Soviet railways at that time used the conventional European type of screw couplings and, if utilised to its full haulage capacity, Ya-01 would have pulled the wagon couplings apart. Although US-style knuckle couplers were introduced from about 1935 onwards, the Soviet Union was not wholly converted to knuckle couplers until the 1950s.
An unanswered question
The unanswered question is why such a powerful loco was ordered when a lesser design in, say, the 180-200 ton range would have met the need. Was it enthusiastic salesmanship by Beyer Peacock . . . or was it the anti-Garratt faction in the Soviet railway administration who knew that an over-large locomotive would be easier to criticise and condemn than a smaller version more suited to the needs of the day? At this distance in time, we are unlikely to find out.
And what of the fate of Ya-01 itself? For many years it was believed that it had been broken up in the late-1930s, but more recent research by locomotive historian Keith Chester shows that it was transferred to an industrial railway in Eastern Siberia and used there until as late as 1957.
Not at all a bad lifespan for a “failure”!
