Niklaus Riggenbach, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Niklaus Riggenbach

Swiss engineer (1817-1899)

Date of Birth: 21-May-1817

Place of Birth: Guebwiller, Grand Est, France

Date of Death: 25-Jul-1899

Profession: engineer, inventor

Nationality: Switzerland

Zodiac Sign: Gemini


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About Niklaus Riggenbach

  • Niklaus Riggenbach (21 May 1817 – 25 July 1899) was the inventor of the Riggenbach rack system and the counter-pressure brake.
  • He was also an engineer and locomotive builder. Niklaus Riggenbach, from Rünenberg, Basel-Landschaft, Switzerland, was born in Guebwiller, Alsace.
  • After the death of his father, his mother returned to Basel with her eight young children.
  • At age 16 Riggenbach began an apprenticeship as a mechanic, going abroad after completing his training.
  • In 1837 he found his way to Paris, where he accepted employment.
  • By taking technical courses in night school, he acquired considerable knowledge in mathematics and physics.
  • With the opening of the Paris-St.
  • Germain railroad line in 1839 he found his vocation to build locomotives. In June 1840 he moved to Karlsruhe, Germany, and found employment in the machine works of Emil Kessler.
  • Here he soon rose to managing director and was involved in the construction of no less than 150 locomotives.
  • One of these steam engines was the "Limmat" of the Schweizerischen Nordbahn (Swiss Northern Railway), opened on 9 August 1847, also called the Spanisch-Brötli line, which he ferried to Switzerland in order to test it on the Zürich-Baden line. As construction of the Basel-Olten line began in 1853, the board of directors of the Schweizer Centralbahn Gesellschaft (Swiss Central Rail Association) appointed him chief of the machine works.
  • He made several official trips to England and Austria, and crawled under a fair number of steam locomotives and into their boilers, "to make the good even better." Various improvements in railroading bear his name.
  • In 1856 he became a master machinist and boss of the new main workshop of the Centralbahn in Olten.
  • Under his direction this workshop evolved into a full-fledged engine works, building the company's own locomotives and bridges. Track grip (adhesion) on the Hauenstein line caused him concern.
  • The difficulties led Riggenbach to the concept of the rack railway.
  • After many attempts he discovered that one could negotiate steeper stretches of track by bolting a rack between the rails, which a toothed wheel or cog on the underside of the locomotive could engage.
  • He built his first locomotive in 1862, and on 12 August 1863 France awarded him Patent No.
  • 59625 for the invention.
  • The Vitznau-Rigi line was inaugurated in 1871 as the first mountain railway to use the Riggenbach system in Europe.
  • The locomotives were equipped with his counter-pressure braking system.

Read more at Wikipedia

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