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Carl Abraham Pihl (16 January 1825 – 14 September 1897) was a Norwegian civil engineer and director of the Norwegian State Railways (NSB) from 1865 until his death. Pihl was one of the main architects of the use of narrow gauge railways in Norway. ==Biography== The son of Thomas Bugge Pihl and Fredrikke Wivicke Margrethe Løvold, he started off as a seaman, but soon chose to attend Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg (1841–1844). He then went to London and worked as an office engineer; he worked on many cases related to railways, including many of those by Robert Stephenson. After two years he started field work, with a management position at a site in Suffolk until 1850. While working in England he also learned the art of photography. His collections remain a unique collection of Norwegian railway heritage, dating back to 1862. Pihl returned to Norway in 1850, and started working for the road office at the Norwegian Ministry of the Interior, but by 1851 he was hired as an engineer on Norway's first railway, the Hoved Line, where he worked on the section from Christiania to Lillestrøm. After completion of the line in 1854 he moved back to England for a year, but later returned to work on the Telemark Canal, and subsequently as county engineer in Akershus. In 1855, Pihl proposed building pumping stations and gasworks in Skien. Since he was the most prominent railway engineer in Norway at the time, he was hired in 1856 to work on the projects for several of the early railways in Norway, the first being the Kongsvinger Line, the Hamar–Grundset Line and the Trondhjem–Støren Line. In 1858 the office of ''Statens Jernbaneanlægs hovedkontor'' was created to manage the state railways, and Pihl was hired as its director. After the reorganization of the railways in 1865, Pihl was appointed the first director-general of the state railways. When this was transformed to the Norwegian State Railways in 1883, Pihl was appointed director of the fixed-stock division—a position he held until his death. During his last fourteen years he was considerably less influential than he previously had been, but he remained the highest-paid civil servant in Norway at the time. In recognition of his technical assistance, the managements of the Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway and the Toronto and Nipissing Railway offered to pay Pihl's passage to Toronto for the opening of their gauge lines in the summer of 1871. Pihl insisted on paying his own way so that he would not be compromised by such a gift. He sailed from Christiana to England where he spent much time as a guest of the 3rd Duke of Sutherland, and Sir Henry Whatley Tyler, visiting John Ramsbottom at the London and North Western Railway company's locomotive works at Crewe. He then sailed to New York where he met the Swedish railway-engineer John Ericsson. He travelled by steamer and train to Niagara Falls and then on to Toronto. The directors of the Canadian narrow-gauge system honoured him with several banquets and with the gift of a silver vase. He was offered a job in Toronto with the Grand Trunk Railway, but refused despite being offered twice the wages he was earning in Norway; he even insisted that the offer remain confidential so that it was not seen as a means of raising his wages from the Norwegian authorities. In 1870, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and, on 4 May 1880, a member of the United Kingdom's Institute of Civil Engineers. He married Catherine Ridley, at Ipswich,〔The marriage was indexed by the General Register Office for England and Wales as having been recorded at Ipswich Registration district, in Volume 4a, Page 715, for the first quarter (January to March) of 1853.〕 1953; and she bore him 11 children from 1854 to 1875. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Carl Abraham Pihl」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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