Re: Kitson Meyer

Casey Akin Wrote:
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> Ive never heard of a Kitson Meyer locomotive. Had
> to look one up to see. Here is an example:
>
> [upload.wikimedia.org]
> 2/SAR_Klasse_KM.jpg
>
> It appears there are examples with similar axle
> counts on both loco frames, and different. Also, I
> see examples where the driver units both face
> forward, backward, towards each other, and away
> from each other! This seems to be a rather complex
> but highly customizable locomotive.

> Casey

The Kitson Meyer was very highly regarded on railroads that had a particularly large amount of curvature. In South America, especially, numerous mountain railroads liked it better than the Garratt. The Kitson company itself was somewhat small. It only built a bit over 5,000 engines over the course of a hundred years for an average annual production of dozens, not hundreds to thousands like the big builders. Kitson did not effectively survive the great depression, contributing to this style of engine's failure to compete with the similar but more popular Garratt akin how the single fairlie kind of went down with Mason in the United States. As you note, these locomotives came in many forms, with almost no two groups alike. As a point of unique interest for the 3 foot gauge, the strongest 3 foot gauge steam locomotives ever built were a couple 2-8-8-2 kitson meyers of about 59,000 pounds tractive effort that ran in Colombia.

The Meyer and Fairlie were developed at practically the same time (1860's) but in different countries, the Meyer being of French origin as opposed to the British Fairlie. The Kitson Meyer came later (1890's) and it's either a longer Meyer with room for a deep firebox or a single-boiler Fairlie depending on how you want to look at it. If you were to stick a powered driving set underneath the tender portion of a "Mason Bogie" you'd effectively have a Kitson Meyer. Not sure why Mason never thought of that but it may well have if the firm had kept any interest in locomotive manufacture after William Mason himself died.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2020 06:04PM by James.