Mechanical engineering company Heilbronn
The Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft Heilbronn (MGH) was a company that manufactured steam-powered machines, but also other products. The best-known products were locomotives , tank locomotives , road rollers and plow locomotives .
founding
In 1854 Hahn & Goebel Maschinenfabrik and its iron foundry moved from Billigheim near Mosbach to Heilbronn . The name of the company was changed to Hahn & Goebel, Maschinen-Baugesellschaft, Heilbronn . Heilbronn had inexpensive transport routes to offer: the Württemberg Northern Railway from Stuttgart to Heilbronn had existed since 1848 , and Heilbronn had the largest Neckar port in Württemberg since the Middle Ages . The new jobs at the machine factory in the up-and-coming Heilbronn of the 19th century were also very welcome.
In the first few years, smaller gantry cranes and stationary steam generators were manufactured . Apparently quite successfully, because three years later the company's capital was increased. Therefore the company was converted into a stock corporation, one of the first in Württemberg. The name was changed to Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft Heilbronn in 1857 . The official abbreviation MGH was created during this time. The main investor was the Darmstadt commercial and industrial bank. At that time, Württemberg financial institutions were not in a position to support aspiring industrial companies in this way, and the then Kingdom of Württemberg primarily promoted the Esslingen machine factory . The original share register is still preserved today and is one of the oldest of its kind in Germany.
Traction engines
In 1858 the first, still quite small, mobile steam boiler was made for the royal court chamber in Stuttgart. This made 4 HP and had a boiler pressure of 4 atm . With such orders, the young company slowly acquired basic knowledge about the construction of steam boilers for vehicles. The aim was to build steam locomotives. In the period that followed, a total of 18 non-self-propelled locomotives were built by 1893.
Locomotives
The first locomotives were delivered in 1861. Tank locomotives were built, mostly in narrow gauge from 420 mm to 1100 mm. Such steam locomotives were used on large construction sites by railway administrations, in ports, sand pits, quarries, brickworks, sugar factories and on peat and moor railways. Day-to-day operations for such locomotives were rough. The steam locomotives had to cope with rapid heating of the boiler, negligent or neglected maintenance and a higher risk of derailment and therefore had to be designed and built in a correspondingly stable manner. The routes for these locomotives were often provisional field railways .
MGH was only able to build up a customer base gradually. The most important customers were:
- The locomotive dealer Weidknecht in Paris sold the Heilbronn locomotives all over the world. A locomotive that was driven out in this way could still be found in ore mining in New Caledonia in 1965 .
- The construction company Philipp Holzmann needed locomotives for its large construction sites. For example, eleven MGH locomotives were used in the Ottoman Empire to build the Baghdad Railway .
- The Royal Württemberg State Railways initially purchased three construction locomotives in narrow gauge and only later locomotives in standard gauge for normal operation from Heilbronn. Of the standard gauge locomotives, 10 Württemberg T , 51 Württemberg T 3 and four Württemberg T 5 as the largest steam locomotive were built. The two-axle Württemberg T was MGH's own design. The other locomotives were built under license .
In 1907 the only Mallet locomotive with the number 476 was delivered to the Imperial Forester's Office in Metz ( Lorraine , now France ). In the 1950s the machine was still being used to remove wood. In 1968 she came to the museum railway Waldbahn von Abreschviller and still occasionally pulls tourist trains.
It is noteworthy that the Heilbronn engineering company never had a siding . For the delivery, the locomotives were loaded onto a heavy-duty trailer and initially transported with up to twelve horses, later with the company's own plow locomotive as a tractor unit on the road to Heilbronn train station. For the delivery of the T 5, a provisional track had to be relocated from the MGH premises to the train station and dismantled again. The locomotives were too heavy for road transport. The standard gauge locomotives were often tested on the tracks of the Südwestdeutsche Salzwerke .
The long-awaited, prestigious orders had been received from the Württemberg State Railways, but the production capacities were overwhelmed, especially with the T 5. To make matters worse, from 1914 many skilled workers were drafted as soldiers for the First World War. The MGH was also unable to build the large freight locomotives that were in demand for military reasons. So it was decided in 1917 to stop locomotive construction.
MGH had always offered the maintenance and repair of narrow-gauge and smaller standard-gauge steam locomotives as a service parallel to locomotive construction. For such work, she received orders from private railroad companies until the late 1950s. Locomotives that were not manufactured by MGH were also looked after in this way.
The MGH produced a total of 606 locomotives. There were 595 steam locomotives, two battery-powered locomotives, one gasoline engine and eight electrically operated locomotives, of which MGH only produced the mechanical part and which then received the electrical equipment from the Felten & Guilleaume works in Frankfurt and was delivered there .
Road rollers
In 1885 MGH bought a steam roller from the manufacturer Aveling & Porter through the Philipp Holzmann company . On the one hand, they wanted to acquire the technology of roller construction, on the other hand, renting road rollers promised a profitable business. Growing production in industry and the first automobiles required well-developed roads.
Production began with rollers which MGH initially rented from 1887. In 1889 the first steamroller was sold. Customers were city administrations, authorities for road construction and construction companies. The MGH also offered a full range of accompanying trailers such as caravans, coal wagons, water trucks, pump trucks, blasting trucks , road rippers , etc.
The last steamroller was delivered in 1935. The steam rollers were rented out until 1957. 139 road rollers were built by MGH, one of them with a diesel drive and one with a motor for alcohol drive, which was delivered to Cuba.
Plow locomotives
The steam-powered drive machines for a steam plow were always sold to a customer in pairs as a set, usually together with equipment such as plow , water cart , harrow , equipment cart, etc. When plowing, they had to be used together. Due to the heavy weight, they stood opposite at the edges of the field. A steel cable ran between the two machines and pulled the attached plow over the earth with the power of steam. From 1913 to 1928, the MGH produced 37 pairs and sold them to large agricultural estate owners and cooperatives until 1939. The MGH held individual plow locomotives for demonstration purposes and as tractors for heavy transports to the loading station.
Bridge construction in Heilbronn
In 1867 the Heilbronn Neckar Bridge was completed by the MGH. It connected the then young Bahnhofsviertel west of the Neckar with the center of Heilbronn, Kramstrasse, which later became Kaiserstrasse in 1897. It was a steel arch bridge. A second steel lattice bridge was built in 1878 on the Götzenturm to the west between the old town and the newer industrial area south of the train station. It was popularly known as the Eiserner Steg . Both bridges were in the vicinity of the plant and impressively demonstrated the capabilities of the MGH over the decades.
Both bridges were destroyed in World War II. The bridge at the Götzenturm fell victim to the air raid on Heilbronn on December 4, 1944, and the Heilbronn Neckar bridge was blown up by the Wehrmacht when they retreated on April 2, 1945 in order to arrest the Allied opponents on the west side of the Neckar. Today the Friedrich-Ebert-Brücke stands in its place.
Developments up to the present
From 1927 MGH manufactured single-cylinder two-stroke engines for the still young motorcycle industry . Since one worked according to the specifications of the two designers Xaver and Richard Küchen , the engines were called K engines. From 1927 to 1936, 40,000 single-cylinder two-stroke engines were built. Customers were well-known companies such as Zündapp , Victoria and Triumph . In the 1930s, three-wheeled vans and small trucks were produced for a short time , powered by the self-made engines.
In 1937 the Aktiengesellschaft Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft Heilbronn was converted into a GmbH due to financial difficulties . MGH broke away from the initially successful engine production and stabilized itself with repair orders and facilities for other companies in the surrounding area. One turned gradually to the construction of machines for industrial plants. The maintenance, repair and spare parts production for the steam technology was initially retained.
The Second World War caused a lot of damage to the plant, but also some repair orders that enabled the company to survive. Since 1950 the company called Heilbronn Maschinenbau GmbH & Co . She got involved in the manufacture of machines for sheet metal working and continuously expanded her product range. The offer ranged from mechanical eccentric presses with a pressing force of up to 12,000 kN to belt systems and complete production lines .
In 1982, due to lack of space, the historic company headquarters at Olgastraße 45 was given up and a modern building in the Böllinger Höfe industrial area northwest of Heilbronn was moved into. The former assembly hall from 1904 and another former factory building still exist at the old location. Today the Olga Youth Center is located there. The assembly hall is a listed building as a machine factory .
After increasing difficulties, Heilbronn Maschinenbau had to file for bankruptcy on June 14, 2007 due to excessive indebtedness . After reducing the number of employees from 70 to 55, business operations could initially be continued under the direction of an insolvency administrator. On July 28, 2008, the company was taken over by the Polish manufacturer of hydraulic presses Hydrapress SA and renamed Heilbronn Pressen GmbH . In September 2009 bankruptcy had to be filed again. At the beginning of 2010 the Polish joint stock company Makrum became the new owner. Nevertheless, on September 1, 2010, insolvency proceedings were opened again, which means the end of this company.
literature
- Werner Willhaus: Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft Heilbronn (MGH) . EK-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 2000, ISBN 3-88255-836-9 .
Web links
- Heilbronn Pressen GmbH website
- werkbahn.de via the Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft Heilbronn (with a list of the locomotives that have been preserved)
Individual evidence
- ^ Manfred Stockburger: Heilbronn company in difficulties . In: Heilbronn voice . June 15, 2007 ( from Stimme.de [accessed on November 17, 2009]).
- ↑ mfd: Heilbronn company is saved . In: Heilbronn voice . August 18, 2007 ( from Stimme.de [accessed November 17, 2009]).
- ^ Manfred Stockburger: Heilbronn Pressen GmbH: Insolvency proceedings opened . In: Heilbronn voice . August 4, 2009 ( from Stimme.de [accessed November 17, 2009]).
- ↑ mfd: Insolvent traditional company has new owner . In: Heilbronn voice . July 29, 2008 ( from Stimme.de [accessed November 17, 2009]).
- ↑ Werner Teves: Heilbronn Pressen GmbH: Insolvency proceedings opened . In: Heilbronn voice . September 4, 2009 ( from Stimme.de [accessed November 17, 2009]).
- ↑ Manfred Stockburger: New courage, new momentum . In: Heilbronn voice . March 6, 2010 ( from Stimme.de [accessed on March 14, 2010]).
- ↑ Werner Tewes: Heilbronn pressing before the end . In: Heilbronn voice . September 6, 2010 ( from Stimme.de [accessed on May 10, 2011]).