Jakob Buchli was a Swiss design engineer

Design engineer

Design Engineer is a general term that covers multiple engineering disciplines including electrical, mechanical, industrial design and civil engineering, architectural engineers in the U.S...

 in the field of locomotive

Locomotive

A locomotive is a railway vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. The word originates from the Latin loco – "from a place", ablative of locus, "place" + Medieval Latin motivus, "causing motion", and is a shortened form of the term locomotive engine, first used in the early 19th...

 construction.

Life

Jakob Buchli was born in Chur

Chur

Chur or Coire is the capital of the Swiss canton of Graubünden and lies in the northern part of the canton.-History:The name "chur" derives perhaps from the Celtic kora or koria, meaning "tribe", or from the Latin curia....

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, on 4 March 1876. After his training to be an engineer he worked from 1902 to 1910 for the Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works

Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works

Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works were a railway equipment manufacturer based in Winterthur in Switzerland...

 (Schweizerische Lokomotiv- und Maschinenfabrik or SLM) in Winterthur

Winterthur

Winterthur is a city in the canton of Zurich in northern Switzerland. It has the country's sixth largest population with an estimate of more than 100,000 people. In the local dialect and by its inhabitants, it is usually abbreviated to Winti...

; from 1907 as its head of the design office. After that he switched to Brown, Boveri & Cie

Brown, Boveri & Cie

Brown, Boveri & Cie was a Swiss group of electrical engineering companies.It was founded in Baden, Switzerland, in 1891 by Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown and Walter Boveri who worked at the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon. In 1970 BBC took over the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon...

. in Baden, Switzerland

Baden, Switzerland

Baden is a municipality in the Swiss canton of Aargau, on the west bank of the river Limmat, located in the Limmat Valley , northwest of Zürich. It is the seat of the district of Baden...

, where he was the chief engineer for electric traction until 1924. From 1924 to 1930 he was technical director of the locomotive construction department of the SLM.

Amongst his most important designs were the Buchli drive

Buchli drive

The Buchli drive is a transmission system used in electric locomotives. It was named after its inventor, Swiss engineer Jakob Buchli [Deutsch]. The drive is a fully spring-loaded drive, in which each floating axle has an individual motor, that is placed in the spring mounted locomotive frame...

 (1918) named after him and used on the SBB Class Ae 4/7

SBB-CFF-FFS Ae 4/7

The Ae 4/7 was a universal locomotive of the Swiss Federal Railways, employing the so-called Buchli drive.Last but not least thanks to this drive construction, invented by Jakob Buchli, it was one of the longest-lasting locomotives...

 amongst others, the Java bogie, the Winterthur universal drive and the duplex bogie for express coaches.

He died in Winterthur on 1 April 1945.

External links

• There is a relevant English-language forum at Railways of Germany