Kazantsev, Florentii

Kazantsev, Florentii Pimenovich

 

Born Dec. 6 (18), 1877, in Bugul’ma, present-day Tatar ASSR; died Nov. 4, 1940, in Moscow. Soviet inventor of several automatic air brake systems for railroads.

In 1909, Kazantsev proposed an air distributor of a two-wire air brake for passenger trains. In 1925 the oil tank-car trains on the Baku-Batumi line were equipped with this brake, fitted with the Kazantsev air distributor. He also proposed an air distributor for a single-wire rigid brake, and in 1927 he proposed an air distributor for a semirigid brake (the Kazantsev brake). The engineer’s brake valve that was developed in 1926 by the Moscow Brake Plant and supplied to freight locomotives in the USSR was named for Kazantsev. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.