War Department Beyer-Garratt Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class WD Heavy-3'6" (Locobase 507)

Data from Gavin Hamilton's excellent compilation of Garratt data posted at [], last accessed 6 September 2005; and A[rthur] E[dward] Durrant, Garratt Locomotives of the World (revised edition) (Newton Abbott, UK: David & Charles, 1981), p 192. Work numbers were 7057-70074 in 1943.

These were the only Cape-gauge Garrats built for the War Department.and were laid out as Double Mikados. Examples went to several railways including three to the Congo, six to the Gold Coast (later Ghana), Rhodesia (as its 18th class). Known as "Heavies", they had boilers identical to those of the WD's Metre-gauge 4-8-2+2-8-4, but were slightly lighter and carried less fuel and water.

Durrant wrote that the heavy steel slab used to make bar frames was claimed for higher-priority use, so B P used plate frames instead. He noted that while the design may have been modedled on the SAR's GE class, this batch followed Rhodesian practice of fitting straight port cylinders and using round-top boilers.