Charles Langbridge Morgan
Sir Charles Langbridge Morgan (1855-1940), railwayman and Chief engineer of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway.
1917 Retired from the railway - his life story can be seen in an article written on his retirement in The Engineer 1917/02/23.
1940 Obituary [1]
SIR CHARLES LANGBRIDGE MORGAN, C.B.E., was born at Worcester on the 1st January, 1855, and died at Hove, Sussex, on the 9th November, 1940.
He was educated at private schools in Australia and England, and in 1870 commenced his engineering pupilage under Mr. Edward Wilson, and from 1877 to 1883 he was engaged as chief engineering assistant to Messrs. E. Wilson & Company, on contracts for railway construction in various parts of Great Britain. During that period he acted as resident engineer on the construction of the Banbury and Cheltenham Railway.
In 1883 he was appointed assistant engineer on the Great Eastern Railway, and in 1896 became chief engineer of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway and of the Newhaven Harbour Company. He was responsible for numerous engineering improvements on the system, including the construction of the line from Stoats Nest to Earlswood, which provided a route to Brighton independent of the South Eastern Railway, and the complete reconstruction of the Brighton Company’s side of Victoria station, London.
On his retirement in 1917, he was elected a director of the Company, and when the Brighton and South Eastern Companies were merged by the Railways Act of 1921 into the Southern Railway he became a member of the board of directors.
During the Great War he served as a lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Engineers (T.), and undertook a mission on special engineering duties for the War Office in Italy and France. Later he became a member of the Disposals Board, and he was also a Commissioner of the Newhaven and Seaford Sea Defences.
He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1918, and was created a knight in 1923. Sir Charles was elected an Associate Member of The Institution on the 9th January, 1883, and was transferred to the class of Member on the 30th April, 1889. He served on the Council from November 1912, became a Vice-President in November 1919, and was President of The Institution in the Session of 1923-24.
He married, in 1883, Mary, daughter of Mr. William Watkins, and had two sons and two daughters.
1940 Obituary [2]