Fairlie locomotive
In 1864, the Scottish engineer Robert Francis Fairlie published a pamphlet detailing his plans for a new type of articulated locomotive.
In 1850, the Belgian company John Cockerill & Co built a double-boiler locomotive called Seraing which featured two independently articulated driving bogies.
While these were not ultimately successful, Fairlie was influenced by Sturrock's work, and by the use of back-to-back locomotives on the Bhor Ghat incline on the Great Indian Peninsula Railway starting in 1856.
Later locomotives had rigid connecting tubes with the necessary flexibility provided by metal ball-and-socket joints similar to those used in laboratory glassware.
In 1879, the first government railway line in Western Australia from Geraldton to Northampton utilised two double Fairlies as its third and fourth items of motive power, respectively, but without much success.
The Fairlie design meant that the fireboxes and ashpans were not restricted by frame or track width, but only by the overall loading gauge.
During its original operation, the Ffestiniog owned a total of five Fairlie locomotives (four Double and one Single), one of which is on display in the UK National Collection.
Since the reopening of the railway in presentation, their Boston Lodge workshops have built three new Double Fairlies, the most recent being James Spooner II which entered service in 2023 to replace Earl of Merioneth.
[5][6] The locomotive sold in the US was ordered for the newly built Denver and Rio Grande Railroad in 1872, and was named "Mountaineer".
Five narrow-gauge Fairlie Patent locomotives were built by the Avonside Engine Company, Bristol in the early 1870s for use by Canadian railways.
The Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway of Ontario also used one 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge Fairlie locomotive, delivered in 1872.
In Cape Breton Island, three 3 ft (914 mm) gauge Fairlie Patent locomotives built by Bristol's Avonside Company were used to haul coal between Sydney and Reserve Mines from 1872 until 1902.
The tractive effort figures (see table below) are notably high compared to relatively modern locomotives (such as the BR Standard Class 9F).
Three twelve-wheeled Avonside Fairlies were built for this Company in 1871 to work traffic on the steeply graded section of the main line between Cordoba and the 7,923 ft (2,415 m).
So successful were they that they were the forerunners of no less than fifty Fairlies supplied to Mexico by Avonside and other British builders over a period of forty years."
Durrant[9] took a more sceptical view:"The largest Fairlies built were...102-short-ton (91-long-ton; 93 t) examples for the Mexicano Railway...Despite their impressive proportions, these engines were devoid of superheaters or modern valve arrangements and were soon replaced by electrification."
Detailed specifications can be found at steamlocomotive.com [10] Key: Durrant shows a photograph (credited to English Electric) of FCM number 184, built by Vulcan Foundry (VF) in 1911.
This photograph of FCM number 183 [1] Archived 11 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine shows a locomotive of distinctly American appearance.
Fairlie's design has less room for fuel supplies than a normal tank locomotive, that can be fitted with a bunker at the back of the cab.
It is recorded by Rolt that difficulties encountered in 1909 with the design and construction of steam-tight flexible steam connections for the Garratt locomotive were solved by Beyer, Peacock & Company's designers after studying the spherical steam joints on a Fairlie locomotive built for the Ffestiniog Railway.
All FR Fairlies have had a reputation for a smooth footplate ride when compared with the original George England and Co. built 0-4-0 engines.
This design abandoned the bidirectional nature of the double Fairlie but gained back the ability to have a large bunker and water tank behind the cab, and the possibility of using a trailing tender if necessary.
The first Single Fairlie locomotive was an 0-4-4T designed and constructed by Alexander McDonnell for the Great Southern & Western Railway in 1869.
The design was chosen with the belief that if one boiler or set of valve gear was damaged by enemy fire, the loco could continue to operate.
It was similar in appearance to a Garratt locomotive but the boiler, fuel and water tanks were all mounted on a single frame which was pivoted on the power bogies.
[22] The success of this conversion resulted in Merddin Emrys, the oldest of the FR Fairlies, being converted back to coal burning in 2007.
[23] The oldest Fairlie still in operation is a Mason Bogie preserved at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
A double Fairlie tramway type engine is also preserved in Eastern Germany, and one of the original Festiniog locomotives, Livingston Thompson of 1885, is in the National Railway Museum in York.
