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French mechanical engineer and designer of advanced steam locomotives. The work accomplished by Chapelon, by transforming locomotives which were far from new and bringing incredible improvements to their performances, justify an opinion making him the greatest engineer in locomotives since Robert Stephenson. If it's true, that's because him alone seemed to be able to embrace the full significance of these interactions between the various organs of the machine and to deal with them in a scientifical manner, in such a way that he was even able to predict the extroardinary results they will gave. His first great achievement was the invention in collaboration with the Finnish locomotive engineer Kyösti Kylälä of the Kyl-Chap exhaust, which among other things made possible Mallard's record-breaking run of 1938 on the LNER. His finest works, however, were the 240P, 242A1 and 160A1 Classes, built for SNCF after nationalization in 1938. In 1934, Chapelon was appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and awarded both the Plumey Prize of the Academie des Sciences and the Gold Medal of the Société d'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale. From 1938 he published the book for which he is most noted: « La locomotive à vapeur ». |
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variant spelling: CHAPELON, André |
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DMG-Lib
Europeana