Brandt, Alfred

Alfred Brandt, (born September 3, 1846, Hamburg [Germany]—died November 29, 1899, Brig, Switzerland), German civil engineer who was primarily responsible for the successful driving of the Simplon Tunnel, one of the largest of the great Alpine tunnels.

As a young railroad engineer in the 1870s, Brandt observed the difficulties of the construction of the St. Gotthard Tunnel (Italy-Switzerland) and was struck by the possibility of improving the drilling-blasting sequence by employing a hydraulic rather than a pneumatic drill. He designed a machine that was tried out in the next Alpine railroad tunnel built, the Arlberg (Austria-Switzerland), and it proved a great success. Commissioned to drive the 20-km (12.5-mile) Simplon Tunnel (Italy-Switzerland), Brandt produced a novel plan to combat the high temperatures resulting from the tunnel depth—two galleries (separate tunnel headings parallel to each other), connected by crosshatches, providing ventilation and a circuit for supply and debris-removal trains. The new tunnelling technique proved brilliantly successful, but Brandt, working almost 24 hours a day, succumbed to strain and died a little more than a year after the work commenced.