Orenstein & Koppel

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Orenstein & Koppel (normally abbreviated to "O&K"), is a major German engineering company, and was founded on April 1, 1876 in Berlin by Benno Orenstein and Arthur Koppel.

Originally a general engineering company, O&K soon started to specialise in the manufacture of railway vehicles. The company's other specialisms included heavy equipment and escalators. O&K pulled out of the railway business in 1981, and sold its escalator manufacturing division to the Kone Corporation of Finland in 1996, leaving the company to focus primarily on construction machines. The construction machine business was eventually sold to the FIAT Group. The closure of the Berlin factory is imminent (2006).

Contents 1 Founding and Railway Work 2 Earth movers 3 Nazi Era and the Second World War 4 East German Era 5 Diversification and Demise in DDR 6 External links

[edit] Founding and Railway Work

The Orenstein & Koppel Company (O&K) was a mechanical engineering firm that first entered the railway construction field and was active building locomotives and other railroad cars. It expanded to build goods and passenger cars, and above all, excavators for construction. In addition, graders, dumper and truck cranes were produced, also escalators, transmissions, Fork-lift trucks, compressors, crawler loaders, wheeled loaders, dump trucks, rapid-transit railway lines, buses, tractors, road rollers as well as cargo ships. Passenger liners, shipboard cranes and shipbuilding enterprises rounded out the company's profile. The enterprise had different production locations in Germany. It also possessed a high export portion so a world-wide system of branch offices were created.

First founded in the Jungenthal suburbs of Berlin, the O&K factories expanded to supply the Imperial German Army under Wilhelm II with field service locomotives or Feldbahn. All manner of railway equipment were supplied to the Army. Field locomotives were built by other manufacturers too (who who also newcomers in Jungenthal as well). Starting from 1892 in Jungenthal under the company name Marki Locomotive Works for Landerbahnen or German State Railways and also Army field locomotives are built there. New factories in Babelsberg and Nordhausen were also built. Because of strained capacity at the Jungenthal shops, work transferred to a site near Potsdam.

[edit] Earth movers

After the turn of the century, O&K built bucket chain trencher, first from wood and after 1904, completely from steel; these were propelled by steam or oil engines. O&K also made a railway trenchers for work in heavy soils. In 1922 they manufactured their first caterpillar crawler steam shovel. From 1926 steam engines were replaced by diesel engines, with earlier steam units converted to diesel power as the need arose.

O and K merged with a kerosene engine builder, which were sold under the O&K banner. In the First World War, O and K built engines and cars of all sizes which were essential to the national goals. Strangely, all the combatants used 60 cm gauge light railways on the Western front. (See Decauville, and Railway Operating Division.)

With the collapse of Imperial Germany in November of 1918 and seizing all army Feldbahn engines as per the terms of the Versailles Treaty which ended the First World war, the victorious Allies put further restrictions on German manufacturing and military capacity.

This treaty also removed access to the export markets so much that at the end of 1925 work stopped for three months. Business recovered later however and up to 1935 produced 5,299 locomotives and altogether 9,371 units up to the last delivery in January 1942.

Steam locomotives of the Series 50 type were produced in the 1930s also standard rail gauge vehicles; besides the Feldbahn contracts. Notable items built in this period were cutting edge diesel locomotives and Series 44 and 50 Steam engines for the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft or national railway company.

[edit] Nazi Era and the Second World War

Further, O and K built, at the Spandau factory, cable-operated excavators and bucket wheel excavators for work in the lignite coal mines of eastern Germany. In the course of the so-called Arisierung? on orders from Hitler's Nazi Regime, the Orenstein family's shares were forcibly sold in 1935 and Orenstein and Koppel was placed under trust administration and the Babelsberger works were taken over and renamed in 1941. Orenstein & Koppel existed in name only, but more commonly used the abbreviation MBA.

Surviving heavy bomb attacks on Berlin which caused a fire in the plant administration buildings, thus factory production Minister Albert Speer divested and redistributed factories and work. During the remainder of the war, no more locomotives were built in Berlin. To protect factories, plant and machines, including 421 locomotives already begun, all were shifted to Prague. During the Second World War, O&K/MBA supplied 400 of the series 52; seeDRG BR 52 -- it is unclear whether this work happened at the Babelsberg or Nordhausen plants.

After end of war the Lokomotive plant in Nordhausen becomes idle and work not again taken up. During the DDR epoch, the O and K changes name to the VEB Company. Heavy mechanical engineering work resumed at Nordhausen? Among other things, cable-operated excavator shovels were manufactured.

[edit] East German Era

By 1946 production of Lokomotivkesseln in the Babelsberg works were resumed and one year later they delivered the first postwar locomotive. In 1948 railroads and plants are transformed into a state-owned Enterprise under the roof of the LOWA marque and plants in the east are Renamed LOWA Lokomotiv Plant Karl Marx, Babelsberg. The LKM takes over all the building of diesel locomotives for the GDR, such as the large diesel locomotives like the V 180. To the end of the 1950s years they develop steam engines for the DR above all schmalspurige ?steam and diesel locomotives, with approx. 4160 engines built; roughly split in half between the two types. After the task of the building of steam locomotives ended at the beginning of the 1960s, Diesel-hydraulic and Streckenlokomotiven took priority. In approximately 30 production years, the LKM in Babelsberg manufactured approximately 7760 locomotives, approximately a third of it for the export. Steam engines, reminiscent of an earlier era, were last supplied in 1969.

[edit] Diversification and Demise in DDR

In 1976 they delivered the last diesel locomotive diesel locomotive with the production of type V60D. Already after 1964 a part of the manufacturing changed over to air and refrigeration technology. Afterwards the railway manufacturing and other production units separated. Railway manufacturing continues in Berlin by its successor Bombardier. The Babelsberger site is occupied today by an industrial park. In West Germany the enterprise resumed operation again 1949 under the name Orenstein & Koppel AG; It incorporated under that name after the merger with the Lübecker Crane Company in 1950. The head office was first in Berlin. After the building of the Berlin wall in 1961 the head office moved to Dortmund. By the middle of the 1970s the enterprise had grown steadily. In the year 1972 O&K had five working plants: Berlin (west), Dortmund, Hagen, Hattingen/Ruhr and Luebeck and it maintained a central spare part service in Bochum. It also had 24 business and sales offices in FDR as well as agencies in all five continents.

In the same year the enterprise had 8530 persons employed, the conversion without value added tax amounted to 622.0 millions DM, the export portion lay with 31 per cent, that Capital stock amounted to 50.0 millions DM, at reserves was 44.9 millions DM in an educated manner.

The emphasis of the manufacturing starting from 1949 lies in Building of railroad cars and with construction machines, in particular Excavators. In 1961 O&K manufacture for the first time in Europe a series of fully hydraulic excavators. They have manufactured over 55.000 hydraulic excavators so far, of which more than 700 devices of over 100 tons service weight, therefore also the largest Hydraulic excavator of the world at 900 tons service weight, an engine performance of 2984 kilowatts (4055 HP) and a shovel capacity of over 52 Cubic meters.

O&K also manufactures escalators.

[edit] External links

• List of O and K engines