Brassey, Thomas

SUBJECT AREA: Railways and locomotives

[br]

b. 7 November 1805 Buerton, Cheshire, England

d. 8 December 1870 St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, England

[br]

English railway construction contractor.

[br]

Brassey was initially a surveyor and road builder; his first railway contract was for ten miles (16 km) of the Grand Junction Railway in 1835, for which the engineer was Joseph Locke, with whom Brassey became closely associated. Gaining a justified reputation for integrity, Brassey built much of the London \& Southampton, Chester \& Crewe, and Sheffield Ashton-under-Lyne \& Manchester Railways, the Le Havre \& Rouen Railway and many others: by the late 1840s he was employing some 75,000 workers on his contracts. Subsequently, as sole contractor or with partners, Brassey built railways in many European countries, and in Canada, India, Australia and other countries. Between 1848 and 1861 he constructed 2,374 miles (3,820 km) of railway.

[br]

Principal Honours and Distinctions

Croix de la Légion d'honneur (France). Order of the Iron Crown (Austria).

Further Reading

Obituary, 1872, Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 33.

Arthur Helps, 1872, Life and Labours of Mr Brassey, reissued 1969, Augustus Kelley (this is the noted biography).

PJGR