By the turn of the century, as the tramway progressed and mining tonnages increased, the railway looked to alternative motive power to solve their problems. It was the classic narrow gauge problem; sharp curves, steep grades, the narrowest of gauges and too much tonnage to haul on such a line. The Tasmanian Government investigated various articulated designs, of which there were the Fairlies and European Meyer and Mallet locos to choose from, such as the Orstein Koppel 0-4-4-0Ts. Looking a bit further they came across the little known flexible locomotives called the Hagans Patent, from the builders 'Locomotivfabrik Hagans, Erfurt'. Erfurt is a medieval town in the centre of Germany on the border of what was once East Germany. It is also the town in which my father grew up.
Christian Hagans, born 1829, came from a background of blacksmithing. At the age of 28 he formed his own company, 'Hagans Iron Foundary and Machine Works', where he built metal castings for agricultural equipment. Entering the 1870s, Hagans turned his manufacturing business to locomotive design and construction. The limited size of his foundry in Erfurt restricted the size of the locomotives he could assemble and as such, decided to focus on smaller industrial machines, such as 0-4-0s, 0-6-0s etc, in 36 different gauges. In the early 1890s, noting that the requirements for industrial locomotives were pushing for ever larger, more powerful locomotives, Hagans began looking at articulated designs. The quest was to design big power, for narrow lines with sharp curves, with light axle loading...quite a challenge.
The locomotive type he became known for were the 'swivel frame' locomotives of which he built 150 units for all gauges. These were essentially a standard 0-8-0 type loco, with a bending frame, such that the 8 wheels sat in two bissell trucks. and the side rods could power all 8 wheels from the same cylinder set via a clever arrangement of levers. (This concept is how the LGB 2-8-2 manages to get round 2ft curves!!). The design concept was founded on the need to create a long/large boiler for ample steaming, spread the load over many axles, power all the wheels from the same cylinder set so as to maintain a tractive effort/steam supply balance and flex the chassis so that the long machine could round the tightest of curves.
In 1892 Hagans built his first swivel frame locomotive..outwardly looking like an 0-8-0T, but really an 0-4-4-0, with a single set of cylinders, boiler pressure 175PSI. It was a 28.6 Ton machine for the German Gelnhausen-Bieber open cut mine, 900mm gauge. The locomotive carried the name 'Gluckauf' of 'good fortune'. The locomotive was an outstanding success, hauling trains around curves of 40m radius at 30kph. More were ordered of the same design. The Hagans workshop was now called 'Lokomotivefabrik Hagans'. Hagans also actively pursued and pushed for the use of his design by other engineering firms, such as Orstein & Koppel, Maffei, British firms and even Baldwin in the US, but few took the bait.