If you ask the question -"What is a Golwe?" you will most likely get a blank stare. The search you conduct on the internet will most likely get you documents in Afrikaans on wave forms! Which is in a way appropriate as these beasts were mainly used by the Congo Ocean and Ivory Coast Railways. Information on these beasts is RARE. The sum total of mine amounts to 6 sides of A4, 1 web site, and a magazine article -there may only have been 48 of them in total.

The most common description of a Golwe is that the front end is like a Fairlie and the back end is like a Garratt -but if you read this page you will find out that this is not the whole of the story by any means....

The following page is scanned from 'Meyer and Meyer form Articulated Locomotives' by Donald Binns.

See Picture 1.

There is also a quite informative article in Locomotives International Spring 2005.

This is my first attempt at this type of locomotive and I will confess to not being happy with the result. Later when I have the time I intend to re-build the locomotive with a more prototypically correct method of articulation with spring loaded hemispherical pivots. Nevertheless the home brewed system does allow it to corner at 2 feet 6 inches.

See Picture 2.