August Friedrich Wilhelm von Borries (27 January 1852 in

Bad Oeynhausen Bad Oeynhausen () is a spa town on the southern edge of the Wiehengebirge in the district of Minden-Lübbecke in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe, East-Westphalia-Lippe region of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The closest larger towns are Bielefeld (39 ki ...

– 14 February 1906) was one of Germany's most influential railway engineers, who was primarily concerned with developments in

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

s. Von Borries graduated from the Royal Institute of Trade in

Charlottenburg Charlottenburg () is a Boroughs and localities of Berlin, locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Established as a German town law, town in 1705 and named after Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, Queen consort of Kingdom ...

, and then spent a year working at the Bergisch-Märkische railway. In 1875, he joined the service of the

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

division Division or divider may refer to: Mathematics *Division (mathematics), the inverse of multiplication *Division algorithm, a method for computing the result of mathematical division Military *Division (military), a formation typically consisting ...

of the

Prussian state railways The term Prussian state railways (German: ''Preußische Staatseisenbahnen'') encompasses those railway organisations that were owned or managed by the State of Prussia. The words "state railways" are not capitalized because Prussia did not have a ...

and subsequently became their

Chief Mechanical Engineer Chief mechanical engineer and locomotive superintendent are titles applied by British, Australian, and New Zealand railway companies to the person ultimately responsible to the board of the company for the building and maintaining of the locomotive ...

. In 1880 he designed the first Prussian

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 ...

, built by Schichau in

Elbląg Elbląg (; german: Elbing, Old Prussian: ''Elbings'') is a city in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, Poland, located in the eastern edge of the Żuławy region with 117,390 inhabitants, as of December 2021. It is the capital of Elbląg County. ...

. This showed significant fuel savings. His work on compound locomotives was done in collaboration with the British engineer

Thomas William Worsdell Thomas William Worsdell (14 January 1838 – 28 June 1916) was an English locomotive engineer. He was born in Liverpool into a Quaker family. Family T. W. Worsdell – normally known as William – was the eldest son of Nathaniel Worsdell (180 ...

and the two men obtained several British patents together.Joseph Armstrong. his son & William Dean
/ref> The 1880 locomotive was a two-

cylinder A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base. A cylinder may also be defined as an infin ...

compound but, in 1899, he designed a four-cylinder compound locomotive. Another innovation was the use of

nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow to ...

steel Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...

for

boiler A boiler is a closed vessel in which fluid (generally water) is heated. The fluid does not necessarily boil. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications, including water heating, central h ...

s in 1891. In 1902 he left the Prussian state railways and took a professorship of Railway Engineering at the Technical University of Charlottenburg. He wrote widely on locomotive matters, including a textbook on locomotives.

References

Sources

*''Die Eisenbahn-Betriebsmittel. Theil 1. Die Lokomotiven'', bearb. von: August F. W. von Borries. Kreidel, Wiesbaden 1897 (Die Eisenbahn-Technik der Gegenwart, Band 1). Nachdruck: Bufe, München 1982 *Biografie: Götz von Borries: ''Die Geschwister von Borries''. Fouqué Literaturverlag, Egelsbach/Frankfurt 1998, * Marshall, John, ''A Biographical Dictionary of Railway Engineers'', David and Charles 1978, pp 226–227, 1852 births 1906 deaths 19th-century German inventors German railway mechanical engineers Locomotive builders and designers People from Bad Oeynhausen Engineers from North Rhine-Westphalia {{Germany-engineer-stub

See also

References

Sources