Richard Paul Wagner

Richard Wagner was born in Berlin on 25 August 1882 and studied at the Charlottenburg Technical High School there from 1901 to 1906.

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.

[1][2] 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.

The programme of locomotive classes for the standard steam engines that Wagner helped to create could initially only be instigated on a small scale by the Reichsbahn, both for economic reasons and due to delays in upgrading railway routes to take the higher axle load of 20 tonnes.