Sir Cecil Walter Paget (19 October 1874 – 9 December 1936),''Who was who'', 1941 was an English locomotive engineer and railway administrator. Cecil Paget was the son of Sir George Ernest Paget, Chairman of the

Midland Railway The Midland Railway (MR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844. The Midland was one of the largest railway companies in Britain in the early 20th century, and the largest employer in Derby, where it had its headquarters. It am ...

Company (MR) 1890-1911. He was born in

Sutton Bonington Sutton Bonington () is a village and civil parish lying along the valley of the River Soar in the Borough of Rushcliffe, south-west Nottinghamshire, England. The University of Nottingham has a site just to the north of the village: Sutton Boni ...

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...

, educated at Harrow and

Pembroke College, Cambridge Pembroke College (officially "The Master, Fellows and Scholars of the College or Hall of Valence-Mary") is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college is the third-oldest college of the university and has over 700 ...

, and then joined the MR as an engineering pupil of S. W. Johnson, the company's Locomotive Superintendent. Paget rose quickly to become Works Manager at the main

Derby Works The Derby Works comprised a number of British manufacturing facilities designing and building locomotives and rolling stock in Derby, England. The first of these was a group of three maintenance sheds opened around 1840 behind Derby station. Th ...

from 1904, under Johnson's successor R. M. Deeley. He was also Deeley's deputy.

Promotion

April 1907 saw Paget appointed General Superintendent of the MR by the new General Manager

Guy Granet Sir William Guy Granet, GBE (13 October 1867 – 11 October 1943) trained as a barrister but became a noted railway administrator, first as general manager of the Midland Railway then as a director-general in the War Office. Biography Guy Gra ...

. The role, which would now be called

Chief Operating Officer A chief operating officer or chief operations officer, also called a COO, is one of the highest-ranking executive positions in an organization, composing part of the "C-suite". The COO is usually the second-in-command at the firm, especially if t ...

, was expanded from that of the previous 'Superintendent of the Line' and put him in charge of the daily running of the locomotive department, which was formerly a responsibility of his erstwhile boss, Deeley. The appointment was also open to charges of nepotism against his father. This inevitably led to some friction.

Paget locomotive

Interest in possible developments of the classic steam locomotive led Paget to design and build a 2-6-2 steam locomotive with many novel features (8 single-acting cylinders, rotary valves, etc.) at Derby. He financed this from his own pocket, and work began in 1906 while he was Works Manager. When Paget ran out of money for his experimental locomotive, it was completed by the MR at an additional cost of £1,500, but, without the close supervision of Paget, and probably because of the animosity of Deeley, there was inadequate testing and a lack of remedial work on the design. Work stopped in 1909 and the remains of the locomotive were scrapped in about 1915.

Traffic management

Paget's radical ideas were more successful in the sphere of traffic management and his introduction of train reporting, centralised traffic control and locomotive numbering by power type quickly reduced costs incurred by delays to trains.

Locomotive policy

A point of agreement with Deeley was the need for larger locomotives to haul heavier trains, but this policy failed to get past the company's board because of the capital expenditure required (particularly on replacing weak under-bridges).

Military service

He served in France with the

Railway Operating Division The Railway Operating Division (ROD) was a division of the Royal Engineers formed in 1915 to operate railways in the many theatres of the First World War. It was largely composed of railway employees and operated both standard gauge and narrow g ...

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, commanding operations in France and Belgium and rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is heade ...

. His military awards were the DSO in 1916, the CMG in 1918 and he was

Mentioned in Despatches To be mentioned in dispatches (or despatches, MiD) describes a member of the armed forces whose name appears in an official report written by a superior officer and sent to the high command, in which their gallant or meritorious action in the face ...

. The French awarded him

Officier de la Légion d'honneur The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon ...

and the Belgians their Officier de l'Ordre de la Couronne.

Family

In 1906 Cecil Paget married Lady Alexandra Osborne, fourth daughter of the 9th Duke of Leeds, and they restored a 17th-century hall at

Kings Newton Kings Newton is a village in South Derbyshire. The population of the village is included in Melbourne. The Holy well (pictured) was constructed around 1660, but has been refurbished at the end of the twentieth century. History Unlike many villa ...

, near Melbourne, just south of Derby, as their home. Cecil lived there until his death. After the war Paget didn't return to railway work. He succeeded to the baronetcy in 1923, his elder brother George having been killed during the 1900

Transvaal Transvaal is a historical geographic term associated with land north of (''i.e.'', beyond) the Vaal River in South Africa. A number of states and administrative divisions have carried the name Transvaal. * South African Republic (1856–1902; af, ...

campaign in the second

Boer War The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the Sou ...

. His wife obtained a divorce in 1925 and Paget subsequently married Florence, daughter of James Butt. He died in 1936, survived by his second wife, but without children, and was buried in the family plot at Marlepit Hill cemetery, Sutton Bonington.Beswic 2003

Footnotes

References

* Barnes, E. G. (1969), ''The Midland main line, 1875–1922'', London: George Allen and Unwin, * Beswic, Roger (2003) 'The gentry: the Paget family
''Remembering Sutton Bonington''
accessed 2009-08-16 * Derbyshire UK (2008)

''Derbyshire UK'' accessed 2009-08-16 * Mills, Bob (2000), 'The Paget locomotive' in ''BackTrack'', vol. 14, no. 1 (January), pp. 21–23 * Steam Index (2007)

''Steam Index: locomotive history'', accessed 2009-08-16 * 'Paget, Cecil', in ''Who was who, 1929–1940'', London: Adam and Charles Black, 1941 {{DEFAULTSORT:Paget, Cecil 1874 births 1936 deaths Alumni of Pembroke College, Cambridge English railway mechanical engineers Locomotive builders and designers Midland Railway people British Army personnel of World War I People from Sutton Bonington Royal Engineers officers People educated at Harrow School Baronets in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom Companions of the Distinguished Service Order Companions of the Order of St Michael and St George Officiers of the Légion d'honneur Officers of the Order of the Crown (Belgium) Chief operating officers People from King's Newton