Rai Bahadur P. R. Agarwal
Rai Bahadur P. R. Agarwal (1909-1950), locomotive engineer of India.
1951 Obituary [1]
"Rai Bahadur P.R. AGARWAL, B.Sc. (Eng.), whose regrettable and untimely death terminated a promising career, on 28th April 1950, at the age of forty-one, was identified as a locomotive engineer with railways in India throughout his career.
He was educated at Benares Hindu University, where he won the Prince of Wales Gold Medal and graduated B.Sc. in electrical and mechanical engineering in 1930. After serving his time in the locomotive, carriage, and wagon shops of the Jodhpur Railway from 1931 to 1935, he secured a post as assistant locomotive and carriage superintendent to the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway, and three years later became acting district superintendent at Ahmedabad and Bombay. In 1941 he was selected as Assistant Chief Controller of Standardization, Central Standards Office for Railways, at New Delhi, and in 1944 became deputy director, mechanical engineering, of the Government of India's Railway Board, with the charge of all locomotives and rolling stock for use in India and overseas. For his services during the 1939-45 war he was awarded the honour of Rai Bahadur in the New Year Honours, 1946, in which year he went on deputation to the United Kingdom to attend the Commonwealth Engineering Institutions Conference as a delegate of the Institution of Engineers of India, and he also served in the same capacity for the Government of India at the International Standards Conference held at the same time in London. He returned to the service of the Bombay, Baroda and. Central India Railway in 1947 as locomotive works superintendent at Dohad, subsequently becoming carriage works manager at Ajmar, with control of a staff of 4,000. In the following year he entered upon his final position as chief mechanical engineer of the Jodhpur Railway.
Rai Bahadur Agarwal had been an Associate Member of the Institution since 1946; he was also a Member of Council of the Institution of Engineers (India) and had recently been elected chairman of the mechanical section of that Institution for a period of three years. He was the author of several papers which he contributed to various institutions and technical journals, and was awarded the Railway Board's medal for his papers "Diesel Traction on Indian Railways" and "The Locomotive Manufacturer in India."