Alfred de Glehn

De Glehn's express locomotives were first used on the Nord Railway and on the boat trains from Calais to Paris, where they impressed passengers with their speed.

He invented the Glehn system of compounding, and De Glehn types were built in large numbers in France, and were also built in smaller numbers in Belgium, Germany, New Zealand, and Russia, see Compound locomotive.

Alfred De Glehn was one of the twelve children of Robert von Glehn, a Prussian nobleman originally from the Baltic provinces, whose family had estates near Tallinn in Estonia, who had settled in England and married a Scotswoman.

Their house in Sydenham, London, was a meeting place of artistic, literary and musical people, including George Grove, Arthur Sullivan, Jenny Lind, and J. R. Green.

One of his brothers, Alexander von Glehn, was a coffee-merchant and built narrow-gauge railways in France.