page_title: Richard Garrett & Sons
section_title: Steam wagons
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Garrett & Sons / Products / Steam wagons
caption_attribution_description: English: This photograph shows a Garrett Six Wheeled tipping wagon, works number 35464, with a steam crane loading gravel. Photograph taken in Portsmouth. Note the unusual asymmetric cab, which allowed the driver to sit further forwards and get a better view of the road. This wagon survives in preservation.
context_page_description: Richard Garrett & Sons was a manufacturer of agricultural machinery, steam engines and trolleybuses. Their factory was Leiston Works, in Leiston, Suffolk, England. The company was founded by Richard Garrett in 1778.
  The company was active under its original ownership between 1778 and 1932.
  In the late 1840s, after cultivating a successful agricultural machine and implement business, the company began producing portable steam engines. The company grew to a major business employing around 2,500 people. Richard Garrett III, grandson of the company's founder, visited The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, where he saw some new American manufacturing ideas. Richard Garrett III introduced flow line production – a very early assembly line - and constructed a new workshop for the purpose in 1852. This was known as 'The Long Shop' on account of its length. A machine would start at one end of the Long Shop and as it progressed through the building it would stop at various stages where new parts would be added. There was also an upper level where other parts were made; they would be lowered over a balcony and then fixed onto the machine on the ground level.
context_section_description: The company produced steam wagons of both the undertype and overtype configurations. Their first steam wagons were three relatively unsuccessful undertypes constructed between 1904 and 1908.
  The failed undertype wagons were followed by a relatively successful line of overtypes, the first being constructed in 1909. These wagons were developed using the experience Garrett's designers had gained producing the tractors. The majority of these wagons were fitted with superheaters, a feature used as a marketing point against the un-superheated Foden wagons. The overtype wagons were initially produced in a 5-ton capacity, with a 3-ton design following in 1911. By the early 1920s, the overtype wagon market was declining in the face of competition from undertype steam wagons and petrol wagons. In 1926 a last-ditch attempt was made to produce an updated design of 6-ton capacity using components from the new undertype designs, but only 8 were produced. Overall, 693 overtypes were produced to the firm's designs.
  The final Aveling & Porter overtype wagons were assembled by Garrett, under the arrangements made at the formation of AGE.
  By 1920 the success of the Sentinel undertypes was evident, and Garretts decided to re-enter the undertype wagon market. Their first prototype was produced in 1921, driven by a two-cylinder engine with piston valves actuated by Joy valve gear. Unusually for the time, the wagon was fitted with Timken roller bearings on the crankshaft, countershaft and axles. This design was built under licence as the "Adamov-Garrett" by Adamov of Czechoslovakia from 1925. In 1926 a prototype rigid six-wheeled wagon was produced. In 1927 a poppet valve engine replaced the earlier design, this being used until the end of production in 1932. 310 wagons were produced in this second phase of undertype construction.
caption: Garrett Six Wheeled tipping wagon 35464 of 1931
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