- Robert Garbe
Robert Hermann Garbe (pronounced 'Garber') (
9 January 1847 -23 May 1932 ) was a German engineer and Head of the Locomotive Procurement Department in the Royal Prussian Railway Division atBerlin from 1895, and was especially known for his provensteam locomotive designs forPrussian state railways .Childhood and Education
Born in
Oppeln (now Opole in present-day Poland),Upper Silesia ,Germany , on 9 January 1847, Garbe was the eldest son of the masterlocksmith , Ferdinand Garbe. He went to elementary school in Oppeln and learned his father's locksmith trade. The desire for further education led him to the technical school atBreslau , where he worked in the main workshops of the Upper Silesian Railway and passed his exams as an engine driver in 1867. He also visited the provincial trade school inBrieg , passed the leaving exams with distinction and went, in 1869, to the Royal Prussian Trade Academy in Berlin (later the Berlin-Charlottenburg Technical High School and, today, theBerlin Technical University ). He finished his studies in 1872 with top marks in all disciplines.Prussian Railway Division
Afterwards, Garbe was the director of the Central Railway Workshop in
Frankfurt (Oder) . In 1877 the Ministry entrusted him with leading the main workshop in Berlin-Rummelsburg . In 1895 Garbe was nominated simultaneously as a board member of the Prussian Railway Division at Berlin and Head of Department for the Design and Procurement of Locomotives. In this capacity he also chaired the locomotive committee that had to make recommendations about future locomotive procurement to the Ministry of Public Works.In 1907 the Prussian Railway Central Office was founded in Berlin. Here, Garbe took over the sphere of "Construction of Superheated Steam Locomotives and Tenders". Inspired by the work of Wilhelm Schmidt ('Hot Steam Schmidt') from
Kassel , Garbe was already in 1893 of the view that the use ofsuperheated steam would give steam locomotives a power advantage.Locomotive Development
The locomotives developed on the basis of the policy issued by Garbe were characterised above all by good performance and simple construction. Consciously, he did not strive for high performance with his designs, but gave priority to reliability and ease of maintenance. By the time Garbe retired, a total of 13 superheated steam locomotive classes had been developed along those lines for all the important locomotive duties, together with a number of experimental designs. Garbe's design fundamentals had been so much part of Prussian locomotive development that they continued to be used even after his retirement.
The "
Prussian P 8 " symbolises to a great extent Garbe's design principles. A total of 3,948 examples were built (including the Rumanian copies) and they were working German railway routes until the end of the steam era around 1972-1974.Garbe's major achievement in the field of technical steam locomotive development was the introduction of
superheating . He disapproved of compound working; he saw superheating as a total replacement for complicated and maintenance-intensive compound systems, not as an enhancement of them to produce increased power.The most significant acknowledgement was granted to Garbe after he left the service of the state. The Berlin-Charlottenburg Technical High School awarded him an Honourary Doctorate of Engineering for his services in developing the superheated steam locomotive.
He died on
23 May 1932 inBerlin .ources
* Robert Garbe: "Die Dampflokomotiven der Gegenwart." (erschienen 1920) 1981 im Steiger-Verlag in Moers als Reprint.
* Robert Garbe: "Die zeitgemäße Heißdampflokomotive." (1924) 1981 im Steiger-Verlag in Moers als Reprint.
* Maedel/Gottwald: "Deutsche Dampflokomotiven - Die Entwicklungsgeschichte" 1999 im Transpress-Verlag.External Links
* There is an English-language discussion forum at [http://germanrail.8.forumer.com/ Railways of Germany]
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