Carl Abraham Pihl
Carl Abraham Pihl ( born January 16, 1825 Stavanger, † September 14, 1897 in Christiania ) was in the second half of the 19th century the leading railway engineer in Norway.
Pihl studied engineering at Chalmers Institute in Gothenburg and went in the 40s of the 19th century in England. There he completed an internship at Robert Stephenson and later worked for Peter Bruff in a railway project in the east of England. In 1850 he returned to Norway and worked on the construction of the Norwegian main track ( " Norsk Hovedjernbane " ) Christiania ( now Oslo ) to Eidsvoll with, which was realized with British capital and under British auspices. After the opening of the railway in 1854 was followed by a further stay in England, where he mainly in Wales, worked on various rail and port projects.
Because of the Crimean War, he returned to Norway and finally in 1856 where he was appointed as Chief Engineer for the construction of railways. The construction of the main track had shown that given the difficult topographic conditions and the sparse population of the country, a development with standard gauge railways according to European Standard was not financially viable. Pihl therefore undertook study trips to Austria and Germany and suggested that the new tracks in a track width of 3 ½ English feet or 42 inches English to build. He was at that time the only Norwegian engineer with expertise in railway construction and so his proposal was implemented.
The section of Hamar on Elverum continues for six kilometers northerly basic set was opened as the first railway under Pihls Director and as the world's first railway in the new track on June 23, 1862. A second rail link in narrow gauge on the route from Trondheim to Støren went on 5 August 1864 in operation. The expectations in the train were fulfilled, and so were - all Norwegian primary paths to the turn of the century built according to this system - except the leading routes to Sweden.
The set of Pihl gauge, which is the equivalent of 1067 mm was designated first by his initials as " CAP- track ", and later by the linguistic similarity and the frequent use in the South African Cape Province in Germany in the spelling of " Cape gauge ", in English - however, there is little common - "cape gauge" converted.
In 1883, Pihl was the first director of the newly established Norwegian State Railways. He remained an advocate of narrow-gauge railway in Norway, from " the absolute conviction that this day will never come, as far as we can foresee that in which our railway will reach a kind and of a size which make the standard gauge better or cheaper than the narrow-gauge is ".
Only after his death it was recognized by that narrow gauge railways would be no match for the now greatly increased traffic in the long run, and in 1898 the Norwegian Parliament decided to build the mountain railway standard gauge. By 1949, all primary paths were converted to standard gauge in Norway.