October 15, 2012 The Lorenzo Era, dedicated to the founding father of the plant’s Ural Car-Building Design Office Dmitri N. Lorenzo, was recently published by Uralvagonzavod. Lorenzo was the man who shaped the development of the Russian railway car-building industry for many decades ahead, Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s press service says.

The book was published in the year of Lorenzo’s 120th birthday. The work dwells upon the evolution of the Russian freight car-building industry as well as on Lorenzo’s impressive creative and work achievements, his successful adjustment of the foreign designs and technologies to Uralvagonzavod’s production facilities first and to all the car-building plants in the USSR later. Lorenzo was Uralvagonzavod’s Chief Designer for 24 years. He was appointed to this position in 1935, and as soon as 1937, his Nizhniy Tagil-based design office became the USSR’s headquarters for the design of freight carriages. His twenty-four years in office were Ural Car-Building Design Office’s most fruitful ones.

Under Lorenzo, the office mainly worked on the unification of freight carriages, the introduction of new, highly durable materials, the use of profiled iron, and automation of assembly jobs (primarily electric welding). Lorenzo took part in and supervised the development of over 20 projects on freight carriages meant for different uses, including the heavy-duty 100-ton gondola cars, full metal gondola cars made of low-alloyed steel, and all-purpose cars with a sliding roof. By the early 40s, the country’s entire fleet of railway vehicles – platforms, covered wagons, and gondola cars – had been quite unified.