Richard Paul Wagner

Richard Felix Paul Wagner (25 August 1882 – 14 February 1953) was the Chief of Design in the design office of the Deutsche Reichsbahn in Germany from its inception in 1922 to 1942. He held the rank of Reichsbahnoberrat. Richard Wagner was born in Berlin on 25 August 1882 and studied at the Charlottenburg Technical High School there from 1901 to 1906.

In 1920 he took over as head of the Berlin-Grunewald Locomotive Testing Office. In 1922 he was on the Enger Committee for the Standardisation of Locomotives and was employed by the Reichsbahn Central Office. In 1923 he took over the locomotive section within the Central Office.

With the development of standard steam locomotives (the so-called Einheitsdampflokomotiven) for the Deutsche Reichsbahn he was able to carry through his proposals for rationalising the construction and operation of steam locomotives. These were: to have the fewest possible locomotive classes, to avoid sub-classes and special classes, to have as many interchangeable parts as possible between different classes, even after undergoing repairs, and to produce components to a high degree of precision. As a result, in his time, a programme of locomotive classes was set up in the Standardisation Office of the Reichsbahn and with the manufacturers. On 1 June 1942 he retired, his successor being Friedrich Witte.

Wagner was influenced by his experiences with railway regiments in the First World War (locomotives frequently being out of service, problems with the procurement of spare parts, the maintenance of a large number of different classes of state railway (Länderbahn) locomotives, the lack of standardisation of components, and the need for simple and maintenance-friendly designs) and that led him to press for, sometimes very successful, but also at times rather stifling ideas about the concept of the Einheitslokomotiven. For example, Wagner was vehemently against fuel-saving high-performance boilers and four-cylinder compound engines, that had been very successful in the German state railways (e.g. the Bavarian S 3/6) or in other countries (e.g. the French designs of Chapelon), albeit more costly to maintain.

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