Burma Railways Articulated Locomotives in Burma

Class Modified Fairlie (Locobase 6374)

Data from [] (a page of the ca. 1920 Vulcan Foundry catalogue). See also "Meter-Gage [sic] Fairlie Engines for the Burma Railway Company," Scientific American Supplement, No. 1389 (16 August 1902) , pp. 22256-22258.

In the same website's [], two of the locomotives are shown as works #1775-1777. This was a sizable narrow-gauge articulated with considerable power. Although built as tank engines, the Burma Fairlies always drew their water from trailing tenders except when shunting (switching).

The boilers were fitted back to back and each had its own Belpaire firebox, which eliminated the narrow passage to one side of common firebox that was a feature of the original Fairlie design. Instead, the driver stood amidships working a single reversing gear handle and each of two firemen fueled his firebox through a firehole in the corner. Inside the firebox were thirty-two Drummond cross water tubes that contributed 64 sq ft (5.95 sq m) to each firebox's heating surface area.

Class N (Locobase 20108)

Data from "0-6-6-0 Mallet Articulated Compound Locomotive", Railway and Locomotive Engineering, Volume 24, No 10 (October 1911), p. 418; and [],4200476, last accessed 18 October 2011. See also "Hill Lines of India" (1935), archived on Mike's Railway History site at [], last accessed 4 July 2021. ,

Works numbers were 19117-19120 in 1911, 20077-20080 in 1913, 21079-21082 in 1915, and 22701-22705 in 1921.

This all-adhesion Mallet design came in four batches in the teens. All seventeen had Belpaire fireboxes and balanced slide valves supplying both HP and LP cylinders.

According to Hill , "these engines dealt with the bulk of the traffic, goods, passenger, and mixed, on this [the Lashio branch] and the Southern Shan States branch-assisted by a sturdy 2-6-2 tank for pushing work-until the introduction of the 2-8-0 + 0-8-2 Beyer-Garratt."

Somehow, Glasgow's Beardmore & Co, Ltd got the 1924 contract to add five more. These superheated Ns class locomotives appear in Locobase 11046.

Class Ns (Locobase 11046)

Data from [],4200476, last accessed 6 November 2016. See also "Articulated Locomotive Tests in India and Burma", Railway Engineer, Volume 46, No.11 (November 1925), pp. 399-402. Works numbers wer 264-268 in 1924.

Locobase 20108 describes the four batches of this all-adhesion Mallet design delivered in the 'teens and early twenties. Somehow, Glasgow's Beardmore & Co, Ltd got the 1924 contract to add five more. These were superheated and were the model for the BR's upgrade of the earlier 17. The only signficant difference was a slightly greater weight for the 1923 engines.