Giuseppe Bianchi (engineer)

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for others with the same name see Giuseppe Bianchi

Giuseppe Bianchi (Imola, 26 August 1888 – Milan, 20 July 1969) was an Italian railway engineer on the Ferrovie dello Stato between 1913 and 1946.

Contents 1 Life 2 Works 3 See also 4 Bibliography

[edit] Life

He graduated in electrical mechanical engineering at Turin in 1912. Offered a job by Ferrovie dello Stato, he was first assigned to the select committee for the electrification of Rome. Quoting from the transcription of the questioning of Riccardo Bianchi in the full session (10-14 December 1915) of the Chimirri commission (Atti della Commissione parlamentare per l’esame dell’ordinamento e del funzionamento delle Ferrovie dello Stato istituita dalla legge 23 luglio 1914, n. 742, volume II, Roma, Tipografia nazionale Bertero, 1917, page 30):

"From a study done by the "valentissimo ingegnere" who, at a young age, occupies a well-deserved and high role as a head of the Traction service, I was able to establish – simply by accepting in part some of the favorable hypothesis he had formulated – that the indirect advantages with regard to the installation of electric traction (not to mention the increase in income from making these lines double-track) give a 50% saving as opposed to coal at 30 lira per tonne, with energy generated at a rate of 4 cents per kilowatt-hour."

This unnamed source he cited may have been Bianchi Giuseppe (then 27 years old).

In 1920 he was transferred to the office for locomotive research within the Servizio materiale e trazione (Rolling Stock and Locomotive Service), sited at Florence (where it still resides, under a different name). Although Bianchi distinguished himself through projects of steam locomotives for mainline services (like the three variations of the planned 695 for Ferrovie dello Stato, then the unrealised Gruppo 691), his work was central to the transition from steam to electric power.

Already during the first part of his career he had contributed to improving electric locomotives run on three-phase alternating current (3.6 kV, 16.7 Hz), and subsequently directed the planning of new locomotive types: the E432 (FS) and E554. Subsequently, as the limitations in using alternating current became evident, and after examining the possibilities offered by running on the system on direct current of 3 kV (a success of US railways), Bianchi concentrated on this means of power.

Mainstream historiography holds that the change of the heads of the Railroads of the State after Fascism's partial takeover of power may have contributed to defeating internal resistance within Ferrovie dello Stato to using direct current. Nevertheless, Bianchi refused to subscribe to the fascist party, and was always troublesome if not explicitly opposed to the regime.

From 1922 Bianchi, in the service of the Servizio materiale e trazione's office in Florence, significantly contributed to the planning of Italy's first locomotives and railcars fed by direct current. Particularly the office under his direction worked on E326, E626, E428 and E424. (The E424 was not built, but from 1943 a well-known group of the same name was planned by his successor.

The initial failure of his attempts to reach high speeds with his locomotives and with the electric trains ETR200, allowed his political and industrial opponents to get him dismissed from the assignment in 1937. He was transferred to Ferrovie Nord Milano, where he ran the complete electrification of the network, remaining on it until retirement (except for a short return to work in the FS between 1945 and 1946).

[edit] Works

Bianchi proposed the creation of four "roles" for locomotives, so as to specialize maintenance services more than had previously been possible. This strategy of specialization was not entirely new, but at that time the depot-system was very heterogeneous. It had been inherited from the different railroad administrations left over after the 1905 birth of the national railway system, and had many different engines carrying out the same task, making management and maintenance a heavy burden.

The roles to cover were:

• Locomotive for swift trains. A task for which he designated the E326, to which it later showed itself ill-suited.
• Locomotive for heavy trains, for which he conceived the E428.
• Locomotive "multiruolo" (multi-role), "interpreted" by the 626.
• Locomotive for light trains, except for powerful and costly high-altitude routes. He saw only the 1943 E424 as suitable for this role.

Bianchi fully understood the necessity of maintenance, the standard of service entrusted to him, and the railcars under his jurisdiction, then still highly prone to mechanical breakdowns due to the newness of the technologies used. To meet this requirement, Bianchi in 1928 introduces the theory of 'Interoperabilità' (interoperability): all the technical components of the locomotives should have been simplified in their planning-stages (in favor of reliability) and of a single standardised design to make finding spare parts easier. These guidelines represented a philosophy whose concept was very close to that of the 1950s, spread amongst industry in general under the names “Design for maintenance" and “Reliable system design".

These design choices were carried over to the characteristic "Bianchi Line" in the middle of this period, inspired by the locomotives and systems already used in Switzerland. His locomotives were composed of a heavy rigid chassis, a central box and two small projections, one for each side. With technical evolution, Bianchi himself reduced the projections, but they continued to characterize new Italian engines until the postwar period with the E424, and appearing in service until the 1990s.

Bianchi's activity laid the foundations for the future work of the engineer Alfredo d'Arbela and contributors to the E636.

[edit] See also

• Ferdinando Negri

[edit] Bibliography

For his biography:

• Mario Loria, Storia della trazione elettrica ferroviaria in Italia Firenze, Giunti-Barbèra, 1971
• Erminio Mascherpa, Locomotive da battaglia: storia del Gruppo E.626 Salò, Editrice Trasporti su Rotaie, 1989, ISBN 88-85068-03-0
• Erminio Mascherpa, Locomotive da corsa: storia del Gruppo E.326 Salò : Editrice Trasporti su Rotaie, 1993, ISBN 88-85068-06-5
• Erminio Mascherpa, E.471: locomotive di sogno Rovereto : Nicolodi editore, 2005, ISBN 88-8447-199-0

The main articles by Bianchi on the problems of electric traction resolved by him are cited in the books of Mario Loria and Erminio Mascherpa.

Bianchi also himself published [1]:

• Ferrovie Nord Milano, 1879-1954 (Novara : Istituto Geografico De Agostini, 1954)