Continental engineers

This is an arbitrary division forced by the limitations involved in handling large files.

Abt, Roman
Born in Bunzen, Switzerland on 17 July 1850 and died Lucerne 1 May 1933. Inventor of the Abt rack system. John Marshall. Widely used including in Britain on the Snowdon Mountain Railway.

Belluzzo, Giuseppe
Giuseppe Belluzzo was born in Verona in 1876 and died in Rome on 21 May 1952.. He taught in Milan and then Rome, and was the author of more than fifty technical books. He was involved in installing turbines in Italian cruisers and battleships ass well as equipping the first locomotive for turbine drive, Later Belluzzo went into politics; He was elected to Parliament and was Minister of National Economy from 1925 to 1928. Mentioned in Ransome-Wallis's brief survey of unconventional locomotives (Concise Encylopaedia p. 468). Most of remaining information off another website.
The first turbine locomotive was a small experimental 0-2-2-0T developed in 1907-8, being a conversion of an old 0-6-0T shunting engine built in 1876, carried out by the Societa Anonima Officine Meccaniche in Milan. One axle was removed, and four turbines were fitted, two on each side. Steam passed through all four in turn before exhausting via the chimney. In 1931 Belluzzo acted as consultant for a 2-8-2 turbine locomotive built by the Ernesto Breda company. It had high and low pressure turbines. It is thought to have been tested in the Breda works at Milan, but apparently the Italian State Railway would not allow it to be run on the main line; whether this indicates it was an obvious failure that would only delay traffic when it broke down is uncertain. The turbines drove via reduction gearing and a jackshaft. A condenser was fitted. In 1933 the Officine Meccaniche Miani-Silvestri-Grodona-Comi rebuilt a type 685 2-6-2 at Florence for the Italian State Railways. It was built for express service, and was a 2-6-2 with the turbine mounted at the front. No condenser was fitted. It was tested between Florence & Pistoia, but did not appear to enter service.

Patents: British
13261/1907. Improvements in steam turbines and other multiple expansion elastic fluid prime movers. Applied 7 June 1907 (in Italy 7 June 1906). Published 7 August 1908.
18771/1908. Improvements in steam turbines. Applied 7 September 1908 (in Italy 7 September 1907). Published 7 December 1909. Co-applicant: Gadda & Co.
24628/1908. Improvements in turbines. Applied 16 November 1908 (in Italy 16 November 1907). Published 16 November 1909. Co-applicant: Gadda & Co.
2215/1909. Improvements in steam turbines. Applied 29 January 1909 (in Italy 30 January 1908). Published  29 April 1920.
8493/1913 Improvements in elastic fluid pressure turbines. Applied 10 April 1913. Published 9 April 1914.
138,315. Improvements in steam turbines. Applied 11 December 1919 (in Italy 17 January 1919). Published  27 May 1920.
194,705. Steam turbine locomotive. Applied 7 March 1923 (in Italy 8 March 1922). Published 13 March 1924.
204,661.Improvements relating to steam turbines. Applied 29 April 1922. Published  1 October 1923.
200,269 Improvements relating to steam turbines. Applied 29 April 1922. Published  12 July 1923.
370,751 Improvements in and relating to distributors for steam turbines. Applied 25 June 1931. Published: 14 April 1932.
379,627 Improvements in surface condensers. Applied 18 February 1932. Published: 1 September 1932.
American:
US 1,638.079 Steam-turbine locomotive. Applied 4 September 1925 (in Italy 28 February 1923?). Published: 9 August 1927. Applicant: Breda
US 1,865,551. Reversing steam turbine with variable velocity. Applied 4 September 1928 (in Italy 17 October 1927). Published: 5 July 1932.
US 1,887,178. Turbine locomotive. Applied 11 February 1931 (in Italy 25 February 1930). Published: 8 November 1932. Applicant: Breda

Belpaire, Alfred
Westwood notes: Best known for the eponymous Belpaire firebox, whose distinctive square shape could be seen on railways allover the world. The Belpaire firebox, usually (but not necessarily) recognizable by its square top, was adopted at times by most of the world's railways. Some continued with it, while others claimed that the conventional round-top firebox was as good. Probably, the Belpaire firebox succeeded in eliminating some of the disadvantages of its predecessor, but at the same time had other disadvantages which just about balanced out.

Belpaire was born in Ostend in 26 September 1820 (Marshall) and died in Schaerbeck on 27 January 1893 and hard work plus mechanical talent enabled him to obtain a place, at the age of seventeen, in the central school of Arts et Metiers, Paris. He graduated at the age of twenty, second in his class, and was appointed by the Belgian State Railway to take charge of the Malines workshops. This was a great responsibility for a young and inexperienced man. Furthermore, Belpaire was soon incapicated for many months by a  railway accident in which both his legs were broken. After recovery, he was appointed chief mechanical engineer (that is, Director of Rolling Stock).

It was in this capacity, in 1860, that he introduced a new design of firebox to enable locomotives to burn local cheap coal: Belgium had plenty of small coal of indifferent calorific value, but large steam coal was expensive. Belpaire reasoned that to burn small coal he would need a firebox in which the coal could be thinly spread; the conventional small but deep fireboxes were unsuitable. Thus his firebox was characterized by its great width, and at the same time he replaced the conventional iron grate with a more sophisticated arrangement of steel plates designed to improve the air flow through the entire area of the fire. He also found it possible to replace the old system of stays which held the inner and outer walls firmly at the set distance apart. His staying consisted only of vertical and horizontal stays, fixed inregular lines. Trials showed that his firebox could indeed utilize inferior coals, resulting in a significant reduction of running costs. Moreover, his staying system simplified the construction of the firebox. The design was adopted for all new construction, although in 1864 Belpaire changed the pattern, abandoning the round-top form for a square shape, which made staying even easier: henceforth, the term 'Belpaire firebox' implied a square structure. In the 1880s modifications were made to enable the firebox to be applied to large locomotives, and to extend over the frames and wheels. The original purpose of the firebox, the burning of small coal, was only one of the advantages of this design. The simplicity of the staying cheapened boiler maintenance costs, and the shape ensured a greater steam and waterspace In the firebox area. But the round-top boiler was somewhat easier to manufacture, and hence had a lower initial cost.

The firebox was not the only Belpaire achievement. Apart from designing a highly standardized range of locomotives for the State Railway, he invented a reversing gear in which the screw system was combined with the lever system. He was also the originator of a series of steam carriages for light passenger services. These single-unit vehicles comprised a leading locomotive section with behind it on the same frame, a luggage van or a permutation of luggage van and one or more classes of passenger accommodation. Some units carried a so-called guitar-type boiler. This had a lower main barrel on which was superimposed a narrower second barrel which served as a steam reservoir, where additional heat was transferred by smokebox gases moving by a circuitous route towards the chimney. This type of boiler was removed after it blew up. The idea of the steam carriage was not entirely new, but Belpaire was perhaps unique in the variety of types which he built. A main object of these units was to reduce the train crew to a driver and conductor; the driver also looked after the fire. A man so energetic, so inventive, and so well-certificated was obviously destined to go far. He presided over the second International Railway Congress in Moscow in 1892, and the following year attained the highest possible position in the Belgian railway world, that of president of the State Railway administration.

See: The Locomotive Carriage and Wagon Review, Sept. 1932, Nov. 1939.

Beugniot, E.
Designer at Koechlin's locomotive works at Mulhouse in France of counter-pressure braking system. Carling: Trans Newcomen Soc. paper 55, 10.

Bodmer, Johann Georg [John George]
German Swiss engineer who according to Marshall was born in Zurich on 6 December 1786 and died there on 29 May 1864. Bodmer spent several periods in Manchester and lived in London between 1846 and 1848. His main interest was textile machinery but he became a locomotive builder in the 1830s. A pioneer in the study of balancing, in 1845 he built at least two locomotives for British railways having opposed-piston cylinders in which the reciprocating masses balanced each other (patented in 1834). One Bodmer type locomotive was supplied by the Sharp Brothers to the Dublin & Drogheda Railway: see Norman Johnston's Locomotives of the GNRI (he included a diagram from The Engineer)...
He patented a mechanical stoker and a rocking grate in 1844. In 1844 he developed a rolling mill for steel tyres. Lowe notes that he appeared before the Gauge Commission in October 1845. Locomotives incorporating his ideas worked on the South Eastern Railway (No. 123), LBSCR (No. 20) where Ellis (London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, p.44 notes) that they were expensive (£2100 as against £1485 for a comparable Sharp locomotive). Possibly (according to Sekon (Evolution...) four locomotives were supplied plus the Sharp  locomotive noted) on the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway (Sharp 269/1844) No. 9 Bellona (a 2-2-2). Marshall failed to note that some of the material published in The Locomotive had come from Diaries. KPJ: it is clear that inspection of the Locomotive, Railway Carriage & Wagon Review for the years 1909-1911 and for 1930 is required to improve the incomplete citations listed below..

Marshall suggests that J.J. Meyer's expansion valve invented in France in 1842 and A.K. Rider's valve of 1869 may owe much to Bodmer.

The origin of the balanced locomotive as shown in the Diaries of John George Bodmer; ed. Herbert T. Walker. Loco. Rly Carr. Wagon Rev., 1910, 16, 58-60; 246-8.
Previous part ended in Volume 15 page 113. Pp 58-60 note tests at New Cross, involving Mr Gray on 4 February 1846 and on up Dover train on 23 May 1846. Pp 246-8 describe combined engine and tender of 4-2-2 or 4-2-4 type.

See: Loco. Rly Carr. Wagon Rev., Oct. 1930;
Loco. Rly Carr. Wagon Rev., 1909, 10, 56,110; 1911, 43.
Dickinson, H.W. Diary of John George Bodmer, 1816-17. Trans. Newcomen Soc., 1929, 10, 102-14.
Rowatt, T. Railway Brakes. Trans Newcomen Soc., 1927/8, 8, 19-32.
On early horse wagons, self-acting, continuous, automatic, steam, vacuum, Clark's chain brake, hydraulic. Bibliography.
Winship, Ian R. Some nineteenth century brakes. Rly Mag., 1987, 133, 162.

Borries, August von
In 1880, four years after Mallet's successful demonstration of his compound system, August von Borries and the Schichau Works introduced their two-cylinder compound system to Germany. The advantage of the two-cylinder compound was that it did not deman15%1d the extra expense of third or fourth cylinders,but it had the disadvantage that it was impossible to ensure that at all cut-offs the work done in the large low-pressure cylinder would exactly equal that done in the small high-pressure cylinder. However,a 15% difference in thrust was found to be acceptable in practice, so long as speeds were not too high. Von Borries's contribution was his own design of starting valve and his conjugated valve gear. His system kept the cut-off of the low-pressure cylinder always a little behind that of the high-pressure, thereby alleviating the unequal thrust problem. Von Borries type locomotives became quite popular in Germany and Russia, and were also tried in other parts of Europe. But they were unsuited to high speed. The career of von Borries, born in Minden on 27 January 1852 (Marshall), really began after he had finished his military service in 1874 (spent with a railway-operating battalion) when he became chief mechanical engineer of the Hanover division of the Prussian State Railways. In 1891 he was sent on a study trip to the U.S.A. which was followed by the publication of his Die nordamerikanischen Eisenbahnen in technischer Beziehung. From 1902 to his death on 14 February 1906 he was a professor at the Berlin Technical High School. The compounding system was adopted by the Worsdells on the North Eastern and by Malcolm Bowman on the NCC in Ireland. See: Transactions of the Newcomen Society, Vol. XLIII; Glasers Armalen, 1 May 1906; The Engineer, 8 Feb. 1889. and van Riemsdijk's Compound locomotives.

Bousquet, Gaston Du
Born and died in Paris according to John Marshall: 20 August 1839 to 24 March 1910. Worked with De Glehn on compounding. See also Le Fleming brief biography in Concise encyclopaedia and van Riemsdijk.One of is most notable locomotives was the freight 0-6-2+2-6-0 articulated compound with two driving bogies. Experimented with water-tube fireboxes.

Brotan, Johann.
According to John Marshall born in 1843 and died in 1923. Austrian locomotive engineer: invented a water-tube firebox in about 1870 and fitted to locomotives from 1902.

Brown, Charles
Founder of Swiss Locomotive Works in Winterthur, but was born in Uxbridge, Middlesex on 30 June 1827. Apprenticed at Maudslay & Field in London, but started his own workshop before end of apprenticeship. In 1851 invited to start building steam locomotives at Sulzer in Winterthur, but left in 1871 to form firm which became SLM noted for its rack locomotives. He was involved in the development of electric locomotives in the 1880s. He died on 6 October 1905 in Basle. Father of Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown, born in Winterthur, Switzerland (died Lugano 2 May 1924): major developer of electricity generating and traction machinery. Both father and son covered by Marshall...

Caillet, F.L.
French engineer who invented spring system for long coupled locomotives: see Slaughter

Carnot, Nicolas Léonard Sadi
Carnot (June 1, 1796 - August 24, 1832) was a French physicist and military engineer who gave the first successful theoretical account of heat engines, now known as the Carnot cycle, thereby laying the foundations of the second law of thermodynamics. Wikepedia
Kerker, Milton. Sadi Carnot and the steam engine engineers. Isis, 1960, 51, 257-270

Caprotti, Arturo
Marshall states that Arturo Caprotti was born in Cremona, in Italy, on 22 March 1881 and died in Milan on 9 February 1938. He had a background in automobile engineering (Florence Motor Car Co.). He invented in 1915 (Marshall states 1916) a rotating cam valve gear for steam locomotives, which was applied to an Italian 2-8-0 in 1921. This used vertical poppet valves operated by rotating cams with a scroll form, giving the possibility of varying the angular position of the cams, thus varying exhaust and admission patterns. The gear was applied to some of the LNWR Claughton class, and to some of the former GCR 4-6-0s. Theoretically, much superior to normal valve gear, this margin narrowed after long-lap valves were introduced in conventional steam locomotives. However, research in Britain led to an improved application of the Caprotti gear in the 1950s. This was applied to some of the last class 5 4-6-0s built for the LMS under Ivatt, and to British Railway's last passenger design, the lone Pacific No.71000 Duke of Gloucester and to some of the Standard Class 5 locomotives. The Duke of Gloucester was fitted with this new gear and achieved the extremely good steam consumption per indicated horsepower hour of 12.2 lbs, probably the best result from any simple locomotive ever (the locomotive is extant and when restored was improved). However, this came too late, and the Caprotti gear never really achieved the hopes of its inventor.

Patents

170,855. Valve gear for reversing steam engines. Published: 20 July 1922. Application number: 28344/1921 Applied: 25 October 1921
170,877 Improvements in valve gears for elastic-fluid engines. Published: 4 November 1921. Application number: 12341/1920. Applied: 4 May 1920
205,829. Automatic compensating device for elastic fluid engines while drifting. Published: 9 October 1924. Application number: 26370/1923 Applied: 22 October 1923
232,676. Improvements in the reversing device for reciprocating engines fitted with cam-controlled poppet valve gears. Published: 22 April 1925. Application number: 1776/1924. Applied: 22 January 1924
246,175. Improved apparatus for heating and supplying boiler feed water. Published: 25 November 1926. Application number: 1437/1926. Applied: 18 January 1926
345,775. Improvements in poppet valve gear for fluid pressure engines. Published: 2 April 1931. Application number: 5582/1930. Applied:19 February 1930.
444,010. Improvements in valves for engines operating with a fluid under pressure. Published: 4 March 1936. Application number: 16652/1934. Applied: 4 June 1934
447,479 Improved valve arrangement for three cylinder engines. Published: 15 May 1936. Application number: 32948/1934. Applied: 15 November 1934
448,086. Braking valve-gear for reversible engines. Published: 2 June 1936. Application number: 30567/1935. Applied: 5 November 1935
455,323 Improvements in valve gears for fluid pressure engines. Published: 19 October 1936. Application number: 25506/1935. Applied: 13 September 1935.

US patents

1549712 Valve gear for reversing steam engines. Published: 11 August 1925. Application number: 509605/1921 Applied: 22 October 1921
1869463 Poppet valve for steam distributing gears. Published: 2 August 1932. Application number: 214912/1927. Applied: 23 August 1927
1976325 Poppet valve gear. Published: 9 October 1934. Application number: 431262/1930 Applied: 25 February 1930
2119904 Variable valve lift for oscillating valve gears. Published: 7 June 1938. Application number: 39988/1935 Applied: 10 September 1935

See: Railway and Locomotive Engineering, Feb. 1925; Locomotive Carriage and Wagon Review, Oct. 1923.

Chapelon, Andre

Chatelier, Louis Le
Born 20 February 1815 in Paris, died 10 November 1873. Educated École Polytechnique. Entered government service as an inspector in the Corps des Mines and rose to become Ingenieur en Chef. One of the pioneers of counter-pressure braking and of locomotive balancing, the Frenchman Louis le Chatelier showed in the late 1840s that balancing of the moving parts of a locomotive not only improved riding and durability, but also affected coal consumption and speed.

See: L. le Chatelier, Etudes sur la stabilite des machines locomotives en mouvement (1845).
Winship, Ian R. Some nineteenth century brakes. Rly Mag., 1987, 133, 162.

Cherepanov, Yefim Alekseyevich
Yefim Alekseyevich Cherepanov (1774-1842). Visited Britain to inspect early railways and locomotives: led to construction of first Russian steam locomotive in 1833/4 and a second in 1835. Worked with Miron Yefmovich. See Wikepedia.

Cossart, Leon
Works manager and subsequently engineer-in-chief of the Nord Railway in France, Leon Cossart is remembered best for the Cossart rotary valve gear. This was an advanced form of poppet valve in which two factors were variable (admission and expansion) and the others fixed. This enabled cut-offs of as little as five or ten per cent to be obtained without the inefficient side-effects that such cut-offs would produce with conventional valves. Moreover, these poppet valves made possible the use of very high superheat without temperature distortion and lubrication failure. Such high superheat produced the advantages of compounding for a. lower price and with less complication. These principles were embodied in the 2-8-2 tank locomotives (SNCF class 141TC) that Cossart designed for the Paris commuter service. These were two-cylinder simple locomotives, and were very successful, remaining in service until 1970.

See : Locomotive Carriage and Wagon Review, April 1933.

Crosti, Piero
Developing the ideas of his fellow-Italian Franco, Dr Ing. Piero Crosti designed the Franco-Crosti and Crosti boilers. The latter, used on Italian railways and also experimentally in Germany and Britain, used exhaust steam passing through a single drum to heat the feedwater (the Franco-Crosti later had two drums; but the principle was the same). Substantial economies were realized, but in countries where coal was cheap these were outweighed by extra maintenance expenses. See: Locomotive Carriage and Wagon Review, June 1953, June 1955.

Cugnot, Nicolas-Joseph
Born 26 February 1785; died 2 October 1804. French inventor of steam carriage: experimental sream vehicle pre-dated experiments by Murdoch and Trevithick. See Wikepedia.
Copper, Edward A. Description of Cugnot's original invention of the locomotive steam engine for common roads. Proc. Instn Mech. Engrs., 1853, 4, 33-7.

Décauville, Paul
Born in Petit Boury in Frnace on 7 June 1846. Died 1922 according to Marshall. Developed portable, narrow gauge railway systems for use in agriculture and later for military applications. Ransom, P.J.G. Narrow gauge steam. 1996 noted that system developed to harvest sugar beet and a 60cm layout was installed at the Paris Exhibition of 1889. Decauville had visited the Festiniog Railway in 1879.

Papers
On portable railways. Proc. Instn Mech. Engrs., 1884, 35, 126-49.

Dechen, Heinrich von
One of two Prussian mining engineers who visited the United Kingdom to study the railways: see Report on railways in England in 1826-27 by Carl von Oeynhausen and Heinrich von Dechen; translated and reviewed E.A. Forward. Trans Newcomen Soc., 1954, 29, 1-10. Disc.: 11-12. See also Warren

Engerth, Wilhelm Frieherr von
Born Pless in Germany and died Leesdorf, near Baden, on 4 September 1884. Designed locomotive Engerth for Semmering Railway. Frame was in two portions: the rear enclosing the firebox. The cylinders drove the coupled wheels of the front unit which were geared to those of the rear unit. This was patented in 1852. He served on the Panel of Judges at the Great Exhibition in London of 1851. John Marshall: Le Fleming Concise encyclopaedia gives a somewhat better description of the locomotive.

Carling, D.R.. Engerth and similar locomotives. Trans Newcomen Soc., 1985, 57, 31-56. Disc. 57-8.

Flamme, Jean Baptiste
Marshall states that Flamme was born in Mons on 19 October 1847 and died in Brussells on 25 May 1920. A Belgian of great originality, Flamme was the first, in 1901, to fit Schmidt's firetube superheater to a locomotive, and did so successfully. He produced his unusual 4-6-2 and 2-10-0 for the Belgian State Railways in 1910. The Pacific had a very large boiler with a correspondingly sharp taper, and was conspicuous because its smokebox was set well behind the leading truck. The 2-10-0 was distinguished by a similar boiler and widely-spread coupled wheels and, but for the 1914 war, would probably have been adopted by the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway.  [see Barnes] Some of the 2-10-0 machines were sent to Russia during the First World War to work on captured standard gauge lines, and remained working in the Crimea until the mid-1940s.

See: E. S. Cox, World Steam in the Twentieth Century (1969); Locomotive Carriage and Wagon Review, Jan., July 1927.

Franco, Attilio
Westwood alleged that Italian contributions to locomotive design were small, but Franco made his mark (in Belgium) with a novel three-unit articulated 0-6-2 + 2-4-2-4-2 + 2-6-0 that carried two subsidiary and two main boilers. In 1937 he designed for the Italian State Railways a 4-6-0 with reversed boiler and cab in front, His ideas on improved boiler efficiency were developed by Crosti . See: Locomotive Carriage and Wagon Review, Aug, 1933, June 1953. Not in Marshall

Garbe, Robert
Le Fleming (Concise encyclopaedia p. 498) noted that born in 1847 and died in 1932. Carried out extensive tests on Prussian State Railways from 1895 to 1917. Advocate of superheating and standardisation: huge numbers of 4-6-0s, 0-8-0s and 0-10-0s built to his designs. "one of the greatest authorities on the locomotive". Marshall adds citations to several German publications.

Giesl, A.
Inventor of the Giesl Ejector, a carefully proportioned rectangular multi-jet exhaust arrangement, Giesl spent decades trying to interest railways in his device. About thirty years after he began his studies, the Austrian Federal Railways adopted it and found that it increased the power output of its locomotives by up to one-third, whilst reducing coal consumption. Some other railways followed the Austrian example, but in most parts of the world it came too late, dieselization and electrification being already the accepted policy.

Cox (Locomotive panorama. Part 2 p. 99) considered that he was "a delightfully fair minded man, devoted to steam traction, and a first rate engineer". Nevertheless, Cox doubted whether the device was worth the cost and effort although did concede that it reduced spark throwing by the West Country Pacific so-fitted,

See: Trains Magazine, Jan. 1958; European Railways No.2, 1963.

Giffard, Henri
Marshall notes born in Paris on 8 February 1825 and died there on 14 April 1882. Inventor of the injector in 1859 which he had hoped to apply to steam engines for ballooning. Often mis-cited as "Gifford". Engineer, 1923, 31 August, p. 231.

Gölsdorf, Karl
Born in Vienna on 8 June 1861; died Semmering on 18 March 1916. In charge of locomotive design on Austrian Stae Railways from 1891. (Marshall). H.M. Le Fleming (Concise encyclopaedia) noted that "few men have left such an unmistakable stamp on the locomotives of a country. Noted for the elegance and ingenuity of his designs. 2-cylinder compound introduced in 1893 with simple automatic system which permitted semi-compound working at long cut-offs. 4-cylinder compound introduced in 1901. A ten coupled locomotive was introduced in 1900 with adequate side play. He exploited the Brotan boiler. He introduced the 2-6-2 to Europe. He designed an 0-12-0T for rack system. He developed a valve gear which dispensed with expansion links and introduced a numbering system for locomotives.

Heberlein
Locomotive superintendent of the Bavarian Railways and inventor of modified Clark's brake used in Germany for many years. Rowatt, T. Railway brakes.Trans Newcomen Soc.,1927, 8, 19-32. According to A.M. Bushell (discussion on paper p. 29) Heberlein brake used on Maenclochog Railway in Wales, on the Highgate Hill Cable Tramway and on the Colne Valley & Halstead Railway.

Helmholtz, Richard von
According to Marshall was born in Königsberg on 28 September 1852 and died in Munich on 10 September 1934. Apprenticed at Borsig Locomotive Works in Berlin and completed his studies at high schools in Stuttgart and Munich. In 1881 he entered Krauss works (later Krauss-Maffei) in Munich and in 1884 he was made of the firm's drawing office, a position he occupied until retirement in 1917. His best known innovation was the Krauss-Helmholtz truck which combined the pony truck with the leading coupled axle. He was responsible for a modified form of Walschaerts valve gear and in 1930 he published with Staby a major history of the German steam locomotive.

Book
Die historischen Lokomotiven der Badischen Staats-Eisenbahnen. Karlsruhe, Dtsch. Gesellschaft füür Eisenbahngeschichte, 1982.

Paper
The cause of wear of wheel-flanges and rails in curves: mechanical contrivances to diminish the same. Zeit. Vereines Deutsch. Ing., 1888, 32. English trans. by A. Bewley. Madras: Laurence Asylum Press, 1896. BLPC

Rutherford, Michael. The 'Prairie' - a survey of the 2-6-2 type - Part 1. (Railway Reflections No. 35). Backtrack, 1997, 11, 622-8.
Includes notes on the development of the Wootten firebox and the Krauss-Helmholtz bogie.

Kylala, Kyosti
Kyösti Kylälä was a Finnish engine driver who designed a cowl that split the exhaust cone into four streams. Some Kylala exhausts included two of these splitters in series before the chimney was reached. The system was originally devised to reduce spark-throwing and later it was claimed that there was a more even draught over the tubeplate and that the need for tube-cleaning was reduced. A major step forward occurred when Andre Chapelon of the Paris-Orleans Railway developed his own draughting system: the 'Kyichap' incorporating Kylala cowels.

Rutherford included the Kylala and Kylchap systems in a survey of blast pipe systems.

Léguille, Robert
CME of the East Region of the SNFC. Member of the Pacific Locomotive Committee (India) chaired by [Sir] Alan Mount. Cox: Locomotive panorama, V.2..

Lemaître, Maurice
Engineer of the Nord Belge Railway, Lemaître is known for his eponymous exhaust system. This was adopted in 1935 for all modern Nord locomotives and on some other railways (notably by Bulleid on the Southern Railway). The chimney is of wide diameter, and steam is passed through it by an exhaust ejector consisting of a variable wide nozzle surrounded by five smaller nozzles. In use, a saving of about ten per cent of fuel (or a power increase of ten per cent) was claimed for the good vacuum and low back pressure of this system. See: Locomotive Carriage and Wagon Review, June 1937. Rutherford included the Lemaître system in a survey of blast pipe systems.

Patents
Several issued to Lemaitre, including some American, but only the solitary British one is listed:
452,636. Improvements in or relating to blast pipes of locomotives. Applied 10 February 1936. Published 26 August 1936.

Lentz, Hugo
An Austrian, Hugo Lentz, but born in South Africa on 21 July 1859 according to Marshall (who gives a detailed account of his work), originated one of the most successful poppet valves for locomotives. His vertical type and oscillating cam type, introduced in 1905 and 1907, were worked by normal valve gears, and his rotary cam type (1921) by worm drive. French and Austrian railways made a success of Lentz valves, and they were also applied elsewhere (e.g. on Malayan Railways and on the LNER). Died in Austria on 21 March 1944. See : P. Ransome-Wallis, Encyclopedia of World Railway Locomotives (1959). Also innovator in boiler design: Rutherford (Backtrack, 1998, 12, 333 stated that Heilmann steam-electric locomotive Fusée was fitted with "Lentz-type boiler"..

Ljungstrom, Fredrik and Birger
Of all the inter-war experiments with steam turbine propulsion, those of the brothers Fredrik and Birger Ljungstrom in Sweden were the most successful. Several of their turbomotives worked satisfactorily on the Swedish State Railway, their relative reliability resulting from the absence of condensing equipment.

See: Locomotive Carriage and Wagon Review, March 1923 and Robert Tufnell's Prototype locomotives.

Lott, Julius
Born and died in Vienna (25 May 1836, 24 March 1883). Engineer of Arlberg Railway including the long Arlberg Tunnel and Trisanna Bridge. Died before line was completed. Marshall

Lomonossoff, Dr George Vladimir (Lomonosov, Iu. V.)
Iurii Vladimirovich Lomonosov was born in Russia on 24 April 1876 (into an impecunios rural gentry family) and died in Montreal on 19 November 1952 (Marshall). Graduated from Institute of Transport in St Petersburg in 1898. Russian academic and Chief Mechanical Engineer of Tashkent Railway. From 1911-21 he was Prof of Railway Engineering and Economics at St Petersburg Institute of Transport, whilst he was also president of the Locomotive Research Bureau; CME of the Nicolas Railway; and Assistant Director General of Russian Railways. He was president of the Russian War Railway Mission to the USA. In this position, in the latter part of WW1, he was responsible for designing and ordering about 2,000 locomotives. Later, as High Commissioner for Diesel Locomotives, Lomonossoff was authorized to build three. In 1925 he visited England and placed an order with Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Co Ltd for a 1,200 bhp diesel loco designed by Schliebest, but it was sent to Russia in 1926 before completion: Duffy accepts this as the first diesel mainline locomotive. Author of Introduction to railway mechanics. OUP, 1933. Heywood (Trans. Newcomen Soc., 2000, 72, 1) describes his work on locomotive testing between 1895 and 1901 and also notes his close association with Lenin..

Mallet, Jules T. Anatole
Westwood claims that Jules Anatole Mallet was remarkable amongst late nineteenth century innovators in that he achieved a influential success both in compounding and in a method for articulating the driving wheelbase. The resulting Mallet articulated locomotive became especially popular in the USA, where it attained great size. Mallet's ideas on compounding inspired many subsequent designers to develop their own compound locomotives, some successfully, some very unsuccessfully.

Mallet was born at Carouge, near Geneva, in 1837, and studied and later taught engineering at the Paris Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures. He first attracted attention in 1877, when the Bayonne-Biarritz Railway put two tank locomotives into service, designed according to Mallet's two-cylinder compound system with a single high-pressure cylinder passing its exhaust steam into a second, larger, low-pressure cylinder. The Biarritz locomotives worked well, but like subsequent two-cylinder compounds they tended to be unsteady at high speed, because one cylinder exerted more thrust than the other. Mallet was unable to interest any of the mainline railways in his idea. This lack of enthusiasm is not surprising when it is remembered that even after compounding had been adopted by many railways, it was never adopted by a majority. Those who rejected the idea almost always did so on the grounds that any fuel economies obtained from so-called double expansion were lost by the extra complication of compound machines. This criticism of compounding would be reinforced after superheated steam had shown another way of overcoming the basic problem that compounding attacked: that is the condensation of steam inside the cylinders which resulted from the fall in temperature as the steam expanded. Compounding broke the steam expansion into two parts, divided between two cylinders and thereby made it easier to cope with cylinder wall condensation. Superheating raised the steam temperature so that even after cooling it would remain higher than condensation temperature. Ideally, from the point of view of thermal efficiency, the most efficient machine would be one embodying both superheating and compounding, and many such machines were built in the twentieth century. In the 1870s, however, compounding seemed the only solution. Mallet believed he had a workable compound system, but could not persuade French engineers to try it.

However, the proliferation at that time of narrow-gauge light railways gave Mallet another avenue of approach. These lines required more powerful locomotives than their winding tracks could tolerate, and the only solution seemed to be some form of articulated locomotive. Two articulation systems were already fairly widely adopted. These were the Fairlie and the Meyer concepts, both of which embodied two pivoting engine units, supplied by steam through pipes with flexible joints. These flexible joints, so difficult to keep steamtight, were a weakness of these systems, and Mallet believed he had a solution in his own system of articulation, which he patented in 1884. Instead of two pivoting engine units, he had just one, placed beneath the smokebox. A second engine unit was at the rear, but this was non-pivoting. It was on this rigid rear unit that the boiler was fixed. For Mallet, the important feature of this layout was that it was a perfect setting for a compound system. Steam was taken first to the high-pressure cylinders of the rigid rear unit, and then piped to the cylinders of the leading pivoting unit for re-use at a lower pressure. In this way it was only the low- pressure steam which passed through the flexible steampipe joints, thereby easing the problem of steam leaks. The first such Mallet locomotive appeared in 1888, being built in Belgium for Paul Decauville. In 1889 Decauville's 60cm gauge line at the Paris Exhibition carried more than six million visitors and assured the continuing success of his enterprise. It also assured the future success of Mallet's compound articulated locomotive, for it was on this line that the first Mallet units made their debut.

The obvious success of these machines was followed by orders for similar narrow-gauge units from many railways, at first with the same 0-4-4-0T wheel arrangement but later in other versions. In the nineties the Mallet tank locomotive was joined by the Mallet tender locomotive in Switzerland and Germany.

In 1904 the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad introduced the Mallet concept to America, ordering an 0-6-6-0 from the American Locomotive Company for use on its Sand Patch incline over the Alleghenies. By 1911 more than five hundred Mallets had been built for US railroads. During the First World War the Virginian Railway brought the original Mallet concept to a peak so far as size was concerned, ordering 2-10-10-2 units whose low-pressure cylinders were 48in. in diameter. This Virginian design represented the virtual limit of size for the conventional Mallet locomotive. The overhang of the boiler at the front end on curves was excessive, and the low pressure cylinders were so large that it was impossible to design adequate valves for them, which meant that they worked efficiently only at low speeds and long cut-offs.. Moreover, the 4ft diameter cylinders were the biggest that could be accommodated on American railroads. For this reason most subsequent American Mallet locomotives were simples, not compounds. Later, American designers eliminated another fault which inhibited high-speed running with Mallet locomotives. This was the rough riding of the forward engine unit, which was only loosely attached to the main bulk of the locomotive.

Eventually Jabelman of the Union Pacific modified the articulation and applied a four-wheel leading truck to produce the Challenger 4-6-6-4, which could run up to 80 mile/h. This type was developed into the 4-8-8-4 Big Boys, which are regarded as the most powerful locomotives ever built. Although, at its peak of popularity, the Mallet locomotive was ordered by railways in many parts of the world, it was only in America that it retained its market up to the end of the age of steam.

The Garratt form of articulation, developed later, was technically superior, while many central European lines found that they did not really need articulated types. As for Anatole Mallet, it is said that he did not approve of the concept of the simple Mallet locomotive, as he had evolved his system of articulation as a means of promoting his compound system. In the twentieth century he was something of a grand old man of French engineering, regularly contributing comments on locomotive matters to the Memoires of the French society of civil engineers. He also designed the original locomotives for the Lartigue monorail system. Relatively little information has survived about Mallet the man, even though he was probably one of the three most important post-Stephenson locomotive engineers. Marshall noted that he died in October 1919..

See: I. Vilain, Les Locomotives Articulees du Systeme Mallet dans le Monde (1969)
A. E. Durrant, The Mallet Locomotive (1974)
Journal de Geneve, 16 Nov. 1919.

Papers
On mechanical traction upon tramways. Proc. Instn Mech. Engrs., 1878, 29, 395-439
On the compounding of locomotive engines. Proc. Instn Mech. Engrs, 1879, 30, 328-63.

Meyer, Jean Jacques
According to Marshall Meyer was born in 1804 was educated in Paris and died in Vienna in 1877. Elsewhere he was stated to be an Alsatian engineer, Meyer in 1831 established a locomotive works at Mulhouse (later taken over by Koechlin). He registered several patents for improving the steam locomotive, but is best known for the Meyer articulated locomotive. This had two engine units beneath a single boiler, with the cylinders at the inner end of each unit (that is, in the centre of the locomotive). The engine units were attached to the draw gear and buffing gear. Some units were compounds and known as Saxon-Meyer or Mallet-Meyer. The patent was registered in 1861 and the first unit l' Avenir built in 1868 for a short line which later became part of the Etat system. In 1890 the Hartmann works in Germany Degan to build Meyer 0-4-4-0 tank locomotives for the Saxon railways, the type being especially favoured for steep narrow-gauge lines. Some units were still at work in the mid-seventies in the German Democratic Republic. A British variant, was developed by Kitsons: the Kitson-Meyer, which had a limited success and was used on the Trans-Andean Railway which linked Argentina with Chile. This had a girder frame, sometimes with a tender, and the cylinders were positioned differently. See: L. M. Vilain, Les Locomotives Articulées du Systeme Mallet dans le Monde(1969).

Oeynhausen, Carl von
One of two Prussian mining engineers who visited the United Kingdom to study the railways: see Report on railways in England in 1826-27 by Carl von Oeynhausen and Heinrich von Dechen; translated and reviewed E.A. Forward. Trans Newcomen Soc., 1954, 29, 1-10. Disc.: 11-12. See also Warren

Pambour, Guyonneau de
Francois Marie Guyonneau de Pambour, a French Count, and author of A new theory of the stesam engine and the mode of calculation by means of it of the effective power. London, 1838 Ottley 10409, and of seminal Practical treatise on locomotive engines upon railways, 1836: Ottley 2930. When Pambour visited Britain in 1834, and again in 1836, Woods assisted him with his experiments into fuel consumption and locomotive performance. Pambour's work was widely reported, and translated into English (A Practical Treatise on Locomotive Engines, 2nd edn, 1840). Woods clearly profited from this experience, and was soon conducting his own experiments.

Ricour, Théophile
Born 1831, Died 1916. Igenieur des Ponts et Chaussées and Chief of Rolling Stock and Traction of the Northern Railway of Spain from 1861 to 1867, during which time counter-pressure brake was developed. From 1878 to 1886 he was Chief of Rolling Stock and Traction of the État, the French State railway where he introduced the brick arch (with arch tubes) in 1880 and what Carling termed the first practical piston valves. Carling

Riggenbach, Niklaus
Born at Gebweiler in Alsace on 21 May 1817 and died on 25 July 1899 at Olten. From 1840 to 1842 and from 1844 to 1853 he worked for Emil Kessler at Karlsruhe. He then moved to the Swiss Central Railway, initially at Basle, and from 1855 at Olten. With the support of Koechlin of the Mulhouse he patented his rack system used on the Rigi Railway oped 21 May 1871. Carling

Sauvage, Edouard
Sauvage was one of the nineteenth-century designers who made a success of compounding, even though he himself did not follow up his success very enthusiastically. As engineer-in-chief on the Nord Railway he built the first French three-cylinder compound. This was a 2-6-0 with its single high-pressure cylinder inside and its two low-pressure cylinders outside the frames. The arrangement was later developed by W.M. Smith of the North Eastern Railway in England. and passed from there to the Midland Railway. Sauvage's 2-6-0, like its successors in Britain, could be operated as a compound, a simple, or as semi-compound (by admitting some steam direct from the boiler to supplement that entering the low-pressure cylinders). Chapelon's 4-8-4 prototype 242A1 reverted to this arrangement. Later, Sauvage transferred to the Est, and then the Ouest Railways, and taught at the Academie des Arts Metiers."

Papers
Recent locomotive practice in France. Proc. Instn Mech. Engrs., 1900, 59, 375-433.
Compound locomotives in France. Proc. Instn mech. Engrs, 1904, 66, 327-80. Disc.: 380-467.
Participants to the Discussion included John F. Robinson (pp. 398-400) and Churchward (400-04).

Schleyder, Karl (or Charles)
Austrian.

Patents
17511. Applied 1 August 1911. Published 11 January 1912. Improved apparatus for consuming smoke, ashes and other returned products of combustion in the furnace of locomotive and other steam boilers, and other furnaces. Applicant: Schleyder Ash and Smoke Consum
11456. Applied 16 May 1906. Published 9 May 1907. Improvements in means for consuming smoke and soot in locomotive and other furnaces.
9207. Applied 21 April 1904. Published 9 February 1905.  Improvements in or relating to locomotive and other furnaces
8732. Applied 14 April 1898. Published 18 February 1899. Improvements in or relating to deflectors or baffles for the furnaces of locomotive and other steam generators
8731. Applied 14 April 1898. Published 14 April 1899.  Improvements in or relating to blast apparatus for locomotive and other steam generators.

Schmidt, Wilhelm
According to Marshall Wilhelm Schmidt was born in Wegeleben, near Halberstadt in Saxony on 18 February 1858 and died at Bethel near Bielfeld on 16 February 1924. As the first engineer to make a practical success of the superheater, Wilhelm Schmidt established himself as the most influential locomotive engineer of the twentieth century. His firetube superheater of 1901, rapidly fitted to thousands of locomotives throughout the world, raised thermal efficiency by up to 30% without creating (as did so many innovations) new problems that outweighed the advantages. His later experiments with novel high-pressure boilers in his native Germany and elsewhere were not successful. See extract from seminal Fowler paper on Schmidt's contribution.

Patents
23171/1893. Tubular boiler combined with superheater.  Applied 2 December 1893. Published 6 January 1894.
15296/1894. An improved tubulous boiler with superheater. Applied 10 August 1894. Published 24 May 1895.
9026/1895. Improvements in steam-boilers with superheater. Applied 7 May 1895. Published 7 March 1896.
5908/1897 New or improved means or devices for superheating steam in steam boilers. Applied 5 March 1897. Published 15 January 1898.
11952/1898. Improvements in and connected with self-acting temperature-regulating devices for superheaters. Applied 26 May 1898. Published 26 May 1899.
19173/1899. Improvements in and connected with superheating arrangements with separate firings. Applied 23 September 1899. Published 1 September 1900.
22538/1899. Improvements in and connected with boilers for locomotives or similar tube-boilers. Applied 11 November 1899. Published 10 November 1900 (with Elsner Hermann)
10019/1905. A new and useful joint for the fire tubes of boilers. Applied 12 May 1905. Published 12 May 1906.
17485/1905. A new and improved arrangement of steam-superheater. Applied 29 August 1905. Published 26 July 1906.
5734/1907. Improvements in and relating to superheater arrangements for flue-tube boilers. Applied 9 March 1907. Published 27 June 1907.
24655/1907. Improvements in and relating to steam superheaters. Applied 7 November 1907. Published 13 February 1908.
8519/1908 Improvements in and relating to steam superheating. Applied 16 April 1908 (14 September 1907 in Germany). Published 16 July 1908.
10325/1908 Improvements in and relating to superheaters suitable for boilers of the locomotive type. Applied 12 May 1908 (18 October 1907 in Germany). Published 1 October 1908.
12432/1908 Improvements in and relating to steam superheating. Applied 9 June 1908. Published 3 September 1908.
12751/1908. Improvements in and relating to superheaters suitable for tubular boilers. Applied 13 June 1908 (13 June 1907in Germany). Published 13 Auigust 1908.
5175/1909. Improvements in and relating to steam superheating devices. Applied 3 March 1909 (4 March 1908 in Germany). Published 10 June 1909.
10792/1909. Improvements in and relating to U-bends suitable for superheater tubes. Applied 6 May 1909 (12 February in Germany). Published 2 September 1909.
276/1910. Improvements in steam superheaters for locomotives. Applied 5 January 1910. Published 22 September 1910 (with Peter Thomsen).
2098/1910. Improvements in and relating to combined water tube boiler and superheater arrangements. Applied 27 January 1910 (18 February in Germany). Published 6 October 1910.
17959/1911. Improvements in and relating to superheaters. with Peter Thomsen. Applied 8 August 1911 (10 August 1910 in Germany). Published 30 December 1911.
1287/1915 Improvements in and relating to water-tube boilers. Applied 26 January 1915 (27 January 1914 in Germany). Published 12 August 1915.

See: R. Garbe, Application of Highly superheated Steam (1908) ; Glasers Annalen, April 1924; E. O. Jochmann, Die Entwicklung des Hochdruckdampfes in Deutschland (1958); P. Ransome-Wallis, Concise Encylopedia of World Railway Locomotives (1959); Journal of the Institution of Locomotive Engineers, Nos. 5, 211.

Séguin, Marc
A contemporary of Stephenson, Marc Séguin was one of the pioneers of French railways. He visited the Stockton & Darlington Railway in 1825 and subsequently, and was associated with the St Etienne-Andrezieux Railway and, more intimately, with the line to Lyon. In 1827 he began experimenting with the multi-tubular boiler, and he constructed a model of a locomotive with such a boiler somewhat earlier than Robert Stephenson's construction of the Rocket, which was the first full-sized locomotive with multiple tubes. It would appear, for lack of contrary evidence, that the English and French inventions of this locomotive boiler were independent of each other. According to C.F. Dendy Marshall was born in Annonay on 20 April 1876 and his mother was a sister of the Montgolfiers. Marshall notes that Seguin died in his place of birth on 24 February 1875, also notes that he trained under Joseph Montgolfier. .

Book
De l'influence des chemins de fer. Paris. 1839. reprinted Lyons in 1887..

See: Transactions of the Newcomen Society, Vol. VII pp. 63 et seq (on his observations on the British scene in 1825) and 97 et seq on his multi-tubular boiler

Serpollet, Leon
Died in Paris on 5 January 1907 at age of 48. Inventor of flash-type boiler used in steam cars: Gardner-Serpollet and the Darracq-Serpolet steam omnibus. See: C.E. Lee Rise and fall of the steam-driven omnibus. Trans. Newcomen Soc., 1949, 27, 181.

Stumpf, Johann
Professor Stumpf's 'Uniflow' system aroused interest among locomotive designers in the years before the First World War, at first in his native Germany and later elsewhere. The Uniflow principle was known previously, and Stumpf's work was really its practical application. The principle involves the avoidance of heat-loss by steam entering the cylinder due to its passage through ports previously used by the expanded (and therefore cooler) exhausting steam. In Stumpf's system the used steam left the cylinder through a ring of ports, at each end of the cylinder, which led directly to the chimney; fresh steam entered the cylinder in the usual way. The system was tried by, among others, the North Eastern Railway in England, as described by Tuplin. Briefly, the system worked well and obtained a small economy in fuel consumption, but at the price structure prevailing at that time the extra constructional and maintenance costs were greater than the coal economy. H.W. Dickinson's A short history of the steam engine makes it clear that the concept of the uniflow engine reached back to Montgolfier and Jacob Perkins (who patented the idea) and Leonard Jennett Todd (Patent No. 7801): Dickinson then gives Stumpf of Charlottenburg University his due  citing a paper by T.B. Perry Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng., 1920 (1922?).

See: W.A. Tuplin, North Eastern Steam (1970); Transactions of the Newcomen Society, Vol. XLIII.

Publication

The Unaflow steam engine. 1912 (translated Stumpf Uniflow Engine Co., Syracuse (NY))

Patents

5429/1908 Application (original: 7 March 1908), UK 6 March 1909, Accepted 15 July 1909. Improvements in four-cylinder locomotive engines
25,531/1910 Application 3 November 1910, Accepted 2 March 1911. Improvements relating to manoeuvring and like gear for uni-directional flow steam engines
16,442 /1910 Application (original: 5 March 1910) 9 July 1910, Accepted 23 March 1911. Improvements relating to valves
16,383/1910 Application (original: 18 June 1910) 8 July 1910, Accepted 20 October 1910. Improvements relating to uni-directional flow steam engines

Wagner, R.P.
Born in Berlin on 25 August 1882 and died in Wellberg on 14 February 1953. (Marshall). Rutherford suggests "R" may be "Richard", but that does not help: the "P" would be useful..

Papers
Some new developments of the Stephenson boiler. J. Instn Loco. Engrs, 1930, 20, 5-21. Disc.: 21-47. (Paper No. 253)
High speed and the steam locomotive. J. Instn Loco. Engrs, 1935, 25, 254-69. Disc.: 269-85. 5 illus., 6 diagrs. (Paper No. 336).

Walschaerts, Egide
According to Marshall the name is Walschaerts, not Walschaert. He was was born in Mechlin (Malines) on 21 January 1820 and died in Sint Gilles Brussels on 18 February 1901

Walschaerts, a foreman of the Belgian State Railway, made several inventions of which one, his valve gear, was very successful and was widely used throughout the world, especially for outside cylinder locomotives in the twentieth century. The modern version of this gear was patented in 1848 by his nominee, E. Fischer. He does not appear to have greatly benefited from this success, and remained without promotion for four decades.

For a small country, Belgium has contributed a surprising number of men who have influenced the design of the steam locomotive. The Belpaire boiler and Walschaert's valve gear were both Belgian products, and both belonged to that group of innovations which seemed to their inventors not to create a revolution, but simply to promise a better way of doing things. Both were widely, but never totally, accepted by locomotive builders and operators. The valve gear may be regarded as the nervous system of the steam locomotive. Its function is to open and close the admis. sion and exhaust ports of the cylinder at the appropriate points in each cycle; steam must enter behind the piston and be free to exhaust in front of it. In the early days this was all the valve gear was expected to do, apart from providing some means of break- ing the cycle in order to initiate reverse movement. However, it was soon realized that the ability to change the 'cut-off', that is, to cut off the admission of steam before the piston had completed its stroke, would be a great advantage. Steam admission through the whole length of the stroke was only needed when pulling a heavy load at low speed; at other times it was more economical to cut off the steam prematurely, thereby utilizing the expansive potential of the steam already in the cylinder to maintain pressure on the piston face. In the nineteenth century the most popular form of valve gear was the Stephenson link motion, which enabled the point of cut-off to be finely adjusted from the footplate while the locomotive was in motion. Its widespread adoption enabled the locomotive to be driven in accordance with the task facing it; that is, how its steam could be utilized at any given moment was in the control of the locomotive crew.

During the steam era well over a hundred different designs of valve gear were devised, but perfection was never attained and only a handful were adopted on a large scale. Apart from the obvious aim of providing a good steam distribution, a valve gear had to be reliable, economical in space and weight, and easy to maintain. The Walschaert gear, which to a large extent re- placed the Stephenson motion in the twentieth century, offered reliability, light weight, moderate space requirements, and (unlike the Stephenson gear) a constant lead at all points of cut-off. Apart from being lighter than the Stephenson gear, it also dis. pensed with the need for two eccentrics for each cylinder ( which entailed four eccentrics on one driving axle, undesirable because of stress and because of space restriction). The working of these gears can hardly be explained without the use of models, the various movements of the different rods, levers, and links being very complex. However, the first of the reference sources given on presents a helpful diagram of the gear. Egide Walschaert was born in Malines in 1820 and died near Brussels in 1901. Apart from his contribution to the steam locomotive, his life casts a not-too-favourable light on Belgian society in the nineteenth century .

The Belgian government took the Industrial Revolution very seriously, more seriously and earlier even than Germany Railways were carefully planned, and a heavy engineering industry fostered. Moreover, a technical meritocracy seemed to be the ultimate aim of the govern- ment's sponsorship of technical education with its accompanying emphasis on diplomas and certificates. But Walschaerts, no doubt to his lasting sorrow, did not have a diploma, and for forty-one years, from 1844 to the day he retired, got no pro- motion. He began his working life as a mechanic in the Malines locomotive repair works, and his mechanical aptitude led to his appointment in 1844 as foreman at the Brussels-Midi locomotive shops. It was in this same year that his valve gear arrangement was patented.

Working as a mere foreman for the highly bureaucratized Belgian State Railways, Walschaerts was not allowed to apply for patents in his own name. But he soon found a nominee, one F. Fischer, who consented to file the patent in his own name (which is why in some parts of the world the Walschaerts valve gear was long known as the Fischer valve gear). The design as patented in 1844 is rather different from the later Walschaerts' gear, although the principle is the same. By 1848 Walschaert had devised the improved gear, which is similar to the modern Walschaert gear. This he was allowed to fit to a locomotive attached to his Brussels-Midi locomotive depot, an inside-cylinder 2-2-2. Apparently the trial was suc- cessful, although it was the private Belgian companies, not the State Railway, that adopted it for all their outside-cylinder locomotives. As elsewhere, the Stephenson gear remained the favourite for inside-cylinder machines.

In 1848 a Prussian engineer, Heusinger invented, and in 1849 patented, a valve gear almost identical to Walschaert's 1848 version. This was tried out on a tank locomotive in 1850. At the time there was some acrimonious dispute about whether Walschaert or Heusinger was the true inventor of the 'Walschaert' gear. However, it was always accepted that this was no case of plagiarism, but of independent and almost simultaneous invention. After thirty years Heusinger acknowledged that Walschaerts had priority, but in central Europe the valve gear continued to be known as the Heusinger gear, as indeed was only right. Walschaerts did not make his fortune with this invention. He was only a foreman, and he remained a foreman. In a meritocracy, it is not merit, but certificates of merit, that bring advancement.

References to

See: P. Ransome-Wallis, Concise Encyclopedia of World Railway Locomotives (1959); The Locomotive Carriage and Wagon Review, Sept. 1932, Feb. 1933.

Yefmovich,. Miron
Miron Yefmovich (1803-1849). Yefim Alekseyevich Cherepanov had visited Britain to inspect early railways and locomotives: this led to construction of first Russian steam locomotive by Cherepanov and Yefmovich in 1833/4 and a second in 1835. See Wikepedia.

Zara, Guiseppe
Italian innovator. Patents included:

11825/1904 Equilibrium valve for admitting steam to the valve chests of locomotives. Published 31 December 1904. Application number: 11825/1904 Applied 24 May 1904.

Zeh, Johann
Had been a designer at Gunther's, later Sigl's, locomotive works at Weiner Neustadt, about thirty miles south of Vienna, since 1842, devised a closely similar shut-off valve in the blastpipe, known as the Zehsche Klappe and this was applied to some of the locomotives of the then Kaiserin Elisabeth Westbahn, the main line to the west of Vienna, to which Zeh had moved in 1858, such as the Class 12 2-4-0s built from 1853 to 1863 and a class of 2-4-0s of 1859, in or before 1860. It was possible, with the engine in forward gear to bring trains of 300 tons down long 1 in 100 gradients and, on the Südbahn, trains of 100 tons down the 1 in 40 grades of the Semmering, the locomotives being 0-8-0s dating from 1860 rebuilt from Engerth 0-6-4Ts. No information is available as to how many locomotives were fitted with Zeh's device before it was overtaken by later developments. He put his valves nearer the cylinders than Allan, using a separate valve for each outside cylinder. Carling: Trans Newcomen Soc. paper 55, 10.

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