Alfred George de Glehn (15 September 1848 – 8 June 1936) was a notable English-born French designer of steam locomotives and an engineer with the
Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques
The Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques (the Alsatian Corporation of Mechanical Engineering), or SACM, is an engineering company with its headquarters in Mulhouse, Alsace, which produced railway locomotives, textile and printing mach ...
(SACM). His steam engines of the 1890s combined elegance, high speed, and efficiency. De Glehn's express locomotives were first used on the Nord Railway and on the boat trains from Calais to Paris, where they impressed passengers with their speed.
He invented the
Glehn system of compounding, and De Glehn types were built in large numbers in France, and were also built in smaller numbers in Belgium, Germany, New Zealand, and Russia, see
Compound locomotive
A compound locomotive is a steam locomotive which is powered by a compound engine, a type of steam engine where steam is expanded in two or more stages. The locomotive was only one application of compounding. Two and three stages were used in shi ...
. Compounding lost favour from the 1900s, being replaced by superheating. However
André Chapelon
André Chapelon (26 October 1892 – 22 July 1978) was a French mechanical engineer and designer of advanced steam locomotives. A graduate engineer of Ecole Centrale Paris, he was one of very few locomotive designers who brought a rigorous scien ...
rebuilt many of the French De Glehn compounds from 1929 onwards.
Personal life
Alfred De Glehn was one of the twelve children of Robert von Glehn, a Prussian nobleman originally from the Baltic provinces, whose family had estates near
Tallinn
Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju '' ...
in Estonia, who had settled in England and married a Scotswoman. Their house in
Sydenham, London
Sydenham () is a district of south-east London, England, which is shared between the London boroughs of Lewisham, Bromley and Southwark. Prior to the creation of the County of London in 1889, Sydenham was located in Kent, bordering Surrey. Hist ...
, was a meeting place of artistic, literary and musical people, including
George Grove
Sir George Grove (13 August 182028 May 1900) was an English engineer and writer on music, known as the founding editor of ''Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians''.
Grove was trained as a civil engineer, and successful in that profession, b ...
,
Arthur Sullivan,
Jenny Lind, and
J. R. Green.
Louise Creighton, an author and activist, was one of De Glehn's sisters. One of his brothers, Alexander von Glehn, was a coffee-merchant and built narrow-gauge railways in France. Alexander was the treasurer of the Protestant Evangelical Society of Relief in Paris which provided help to victims of the Franco-Prussian War, and Alexander’s son
Wilfrid de Glehn was a British painter.
Alfred De Glehn changed the
nobiliary particle in his name from "von" to "de" when he settled in France. Other members of the family remaining in England followed his example about 1917, during the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, when Britain was at war with Germany.
De Glehn died at his home at
Mulhouse
Mulhouse (; Alsatian: or , ; ; meaning '' mill house'') is a city of the Haut-Rhin department, in the Grand Est region, eastern France, close to the Swiss and German borders. It is the largest city in Haut-Rhin and second largest in Alsace a ...
in Alsace at the age of 88. His house had been commandeered as the German district headquarters during the war.
See also
*
de Glehn compound locomotives
References
*Obituary in ''The Times'', London of 11 June 1936, p. 18.
External links
Wilfrid Gabriel de Glehn RAat family web site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Glehn, Alfred
1848 births
1936 deaths
French people in rail transport
French railway mechanical engineers
Locomotive builders and designers