Edmund Wragge
Encyclopedia
Edmund Wragge CE was a British
-born and trained engineer who constructed the first common-carrier narrow gauge railways in North America
. He was invited back to Britain in 1897 to engineer the difficult approaches of the Great Central Railway
to a new terminus at London
(Marylebone
).
, Worcestershire
. Wragge’s parents were cousins, married at Oakamoor
, Cheadle, Staffordshire
. Their families were prosperous lawyer
s and bankers in the English Midlands
, although with engineering
and manufacturing
connections. Ingleby & Wragge, Solicitors of New Street, Birmingham
handled some of the legal business of Boulton and Watt
. The Worcestershire Wragges were lawyers and bankers. Charles John Wragge was an attorney who in 1835 became a partner in Rufford’s Bank, Stourbridge with Francis Rufford
, a railway financier, Member of Parliament
, and speculator. In 1851 the bank suffered a liquidity crisis as a result of Rufford’s speculations, and failed. All the assets were sold in 1852, including Red Hill House. Edmund Wragge was 15 years of age at the time and the impact of these events must have been considerable.
Wragge was educated at Rossall School
on the Lancashire
coast. When he was seventeen, in about 1853, he commenced his engineering career as a pupil with Messrs. Fox, Henderson and Company, London Works, Smethwick
. John Henderson, the Scottish born ironmaster
, is said to have been a friend of Wragge’s father. After the partnership between Fox and Henderson was wound up in the mid 1850s Wragge completed his pupilage in London with Sir Charles Fox
and Son, until he was about twenty-two years of age in 1858. A position with Fox, the celebrated engineer of the Crystal Palace
housing the Great Exhibition of 1851, would have required payment of a substantial premium.
where he remained for three and a half years as a District Engineer on the construction of the Cape Town and Wellington Railway. The Consultant Engineer of the proposed line was Sir Charles Fox, who had submitted an estimated cost of £500,000 in 1851. The line was built by the Cape Town Railway and Dock Company, which was incorporated in London in 1853, with a concession to build a line from Cape Town
to Wellington. Wragge was responsible, under a Resident Engineer, for work on 14 miles of the line. It is likely that it was a part of the line near Stellenbosch, where the railway arrived in 1862, for he married Lucy Eliza Carlyon, the sixteen and a half year old daughter of a Cornish Anglican clergyman there in November 1861. The railway was completed to Wellington in 1863.
Wragge then returned to England with his wife, and for a year (1862–63) he was an Assistant Engineer on the London, Chatham and Dover Railway
. Then for the three years between 1863 and 1866, he became Resident Engineer in charge of the reconstruction of the approaches from Battersea
to Victoria Station
, for the London Chatham & Dover, the London Brighton & South Coast
, and the London & South Western Railways
. Sir Charles Fox & Sons engineered this complex scheme of high level lines at Battersea, and the widening of the railway bridge over the Thames.
During this period he prepared a proposal (one of several between 1850 and 1900), for a light railway
in the Rother Valley of Sussex
. Plans and documents developed by Sir Charles Fox and Edmund Wragge were deposited on the 30 November 1865. The line was not built until 1900 when it was constructed by Colonel Fred Stephens as the Rother Valley Railway
, the first of the notoriously uneconomic light railway projects that Stephens engineered. Later it became the Kent and East Sussex Railway
, parts of which are now a preserved steam railway line.
In 1866 Wragge went into practice on his own account for three years, during which time he was Resident Engineer on the works of the Waterloo & Whitehall Railway. This was to have been a short pneumatic tube
railway in a 12 ft 9 in diameter cast iron tube under the River Thames, driven by an atmospheric engine. The line obtained an enabling act in 1865. Some tube was laid in a trench on the bed of the river, but the project was abandoned in 1868, due to the financial crisis following the failure of the Overend and Gurney
railway investment bank. Part of the route is now incorporated in the Bakerloo Line
of London Underground
.
His relationship with Sir Charles continued when Fox asked him to go to Costa Rica
in December 1868, to make a survey for a narrow gauge railway across the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast. On the basis of the survey Sir Charles Fox and Sons were to submit a bid to construct the line. Wragge took along his brother in law, Leonard Carlyon, as his assistant. After a long and difficult journey by steamer
to Panama
, by rail across the Isthmus
, another steamer to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, followed by several days in a mule train
to the capital, San José, he was devastated to find that American contractors had beaten him by two weeks, and scooped up the contract. After fruitless negotiations to try to upset the provisional contract, Wragge and Carlyon set off back to England, but disastrously both contracted a fever in Panama, from which Carlyon died on board ship and was buried in Jamaica
.
On his return Wragge’s letters indicate that he worked on a project in the English Midlands for some months until Sir Charles Fox secured for him the position of Chief Engineer of the Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway (TG&BR), and the Toronto and Nipissing Railway
(T&NR) in July 1869. This placement must have been settled by telegram, because Douglas Fox
left Toronto
on the 27 July 1869, promising to have an engineer sent out, and Edmund Wragge departed for Norway
to see Pihl’s narrow gauge railways on the 1st of August 1869. Wragge arrived in Toronto in September 1869 and between that time and late 1874 he engineered and constructed over 280 route miles of the 3 ft 6 in gauge railways, at a total cost of £900,000. The railways were built economically as a practical means of opening up the interior of the Province of Ontario to settlement.
Late in 1869 Wragge applied for membership of the Institution of Civil Engineers
, which was granted in January 1870. He was sponsored by Sir Charles Fox, and his Candidate Circular provides not only details of his career, but also a fascinating insight into Wragge's impressive list of seconders from the railway industry, including some distinguished proponents of the narrow gauge such as Sir Henry Whatley Tyler
, HM’s Chief Inspector of Railways.
When the T&NR commenced operation to Uxbridge
in June 1871 it was the first public passenger carrying narrow gauge railway in North America, and attracted several visits from US engineers who were interested in constructing similar railways. At the first National Narrow Gauge Convention, at St. Louis
in June 1872, Wragge was asked to speak on his experiences, and was appointed to the Central Executive Committee. Wragge’s railways were technically innovative in their motive power
, using large ‘Fairlie’ articulated types for freight haulage; and purchasing numbers of powerful and successful British 4-6-0
types, 24 years before such locomotive
s were first accepted in Britain (on the Highland Railway
in 1894). Wragge described the railways in two technical papers, written for the Institution of Civil Engineers.
In 1875 he gave up his position with the T&NR in order to become the General Manager of the TG&BR, and the respect he had earned is reflected publicly in the minutes of the T&NR Annual General Meeting
of that year. Wragge was appointed Toronto Area Manager for the Grand Trunk Railway
(GTR) on October 8, 1883, by the General Manager, Joseph Hickson
. Wragge was well known to Sir Henry Tyler, by now President of the GTR. By the 1880s the splendid 2nd Union Station
at Toronto, completed in 1873, was becoming inadequate and more tracks and a larger station building were needed. Wragge was the chief engineer and head of construction for this expansion which was completed in 1895.
Wragge returned occasionally to Britain during this period and a letter in his 1883 correspondence indicates that he was working there with Sir Charles Fox and Sons on negotiations for the building of the Quebec North Shore Railway
. Sir William Cornelius Van Horne
, the President of the Canadian Pacific Railway
(CPR) asked Wragge in 1888 to act as an arbitrator in compensation negotiations between the CPR and the Canadian Government. His work on the rebuilding of Union Station and continued association with Douglas Fox led to his return to Britain, at the age of 60 in 1896, to participate in the building of the last main line into central London
, that of the Great Central Railway
. Construction of this heavily engineered connection commenced in late 1894, of which the most difficult part was to drive a mainline railway through the London suburbs to a terminus at Marylebone
. This was the section for which Sir Charles Fox and Sons were the consultants. Edmund Wragge was the Resident Engineer from 1897 to 1899 and lived in the St Marylebone district, close to the construction works. The completion of the line in March 1899 was marked by the presentation of several technical papers to the Institution of Civil Engineers. G. A. Hobson and Edmund Wragge gave a lengthy and detailed paper in November 1900 describing the engineering and construction of the approaches to Marylebone Station. The Institution Of Civil Engineers awarded Wragge and Hobson the Telford Medal
and Premiums for this work. Hobson is credited with the design of the great railway bridge of 1905 over the Zambezi River at Victoria Falls
.
Edmund Wragge returned to Canada
in 1904, and was in private practice until he retired in 1914. He died in Toronto
, on November 26, 1929, aged 93.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
-born and trained engineer who constructed the first common-carrier narrow gauge railways in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
. He was invited back to Britain in 1897 to engineer the difficult approaches of the Great Central Railway
Great Central Railway
The Great Central Railway was a railway company in England which came into being when the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway changed its name in 1897 in anticipation of the opening in 1899 of its London Extension . On 1 January 1923, it was grouped into the London and North Eastern...
to a new terminus at London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
(Marylebone
Marylebone
Marylebone is an affluent inner-city area of central London, located within the City of Westminster. It is sometimes written as St. Marylebone or Mary-le-bone....
).
Origins
Edmund Wragge was the second son of seven children born to Charles John and Frances Anne Wragge of Red Hill House, Old Swinford, near StourbridgeStourbridge
Stourbridge is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley, in the West Midlands of England. Historically part of Worcestershire, Stourbridge was a centre of glass making, and today includes the suburbs of Amblecote, Lye, Norton, Oldswinford, Pedmore, Wollaston, Wollescote and Wordsley The...
, Worcestershire
Worcestershire
Worcestershire is a non-metropolitan county, established in antiquity, located in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire" NUTS 2 region...
. Wragge’s parents were cousins, married at Oakamoor
Oakamoor
Oakamoor is a small village in north Staffordshire, England.Although it is now a rural area, it has an industrial past which drew on the natural resources of the Churnet valley....
, Cheadle, Staffordshire
Cheadle, Staffordshire
Cheadle is a small market town near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England, with a population of 12,158 according to the 2001 census. It is roughly from the city of Stoke-on-Trent, north of Birmingham and south of Manchester...
. Their families were prosperous lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
s and bankers in the English Midlands
English Midlands
The Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...
, although with engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
and manufacturing
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...
connections. Ingleby & Wragge, Solicitors of New Street, Birmingham
New Street, Birmingham
New Street is a street in central Birmingham, England . It is one of the city's principal thoroughfares and shopping streets. Named after it is Birmingham New Street Station, although that does not have an entrance on New Street except through the Pallasades Shopping Centre.-History:New Street is...
handled some of the legal business of Boulton and Watt
Boulton and Watt
The firm of Boulton & Watt was initially a partnership between Matthew Boulton and James Watt.-The engine partnership:The partnership was formed in 1775 to exploit Watt's patent for a steam engine with a separate condenser. This made much more efficient use of its fuel than the older Newcomen engine...
. The Worcestershire Wragges were lawyers and bankers. Charles John Wragge was an attorney who in 1835 became a partner in Rufford’s Bank, Stourbridge with Francis Rufford
Francis Rufford
Francis Rufford was a British Conservative Party politician.He was elected at the 1847 general election as a Member of Parliament for Worcester, and resigned from the House of Commons on 20 April 1852 through appointment as Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds.- External links :...
, a railway financier, Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
, and speculator. In 1851 the bank suffered a liquidity crisis as a result of Rufford’s speculations, and failed. All the assets were sold in 1852, including Red Hill House. Edmund Wragge was 15 years of age at the time and the impact of these events must have been considerable.
Wragge was educated at Rossall School
Rossall School
Rossall School is a British, co-educational, independent school, between Cleveleys and Fleetwood, Lancashire. Rossall was founded in 1844 by St. Vincent Beechey as a sister school to Marlborough College which had been founded the previous year...
on the Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
coast. When he was seventeen, in about 1853, he commenced his engineering career as a pupil with Messrs. Fox, Henderson and Company, London Works, Smethwick
Smethwick
Smethwick is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, in the West Midlands of England. It is situated on the edge of the city of Birmingham, within the historic boundaries of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire....
. John Henderson, the Scottish born ironmaster
Ironmaster
An ironmaster is the manager – and usually owner – of a forge or blast furnace for the processing of iron. It is a term mainly associated with the period of the Industrial Revolution, especially in Great Britain....
, is said to have been a friend of Wragge’s father. After the partnership between Fox and Henderson was wound up in the mid 1850s Wragge completed his pupilage in London with Sir Charles Fox
Charles Fox
Charles Fox may refer to:*Charles Fox Mathematician*Charles Douglas Fox , British civil engineer*Charles James Fox , British politician*Charles Fox , film and television composer...
and Son, until he was about twenty-two years of age in 1858. A position with Fox, the celebrated engineer of the Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in...
housing the Great Exhibition of 1851, would have required payment of a substantial premium.
Career
In 1859 Wragge went to South AfricaSouth Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
where he remained for three and a half years as a District Engineer on the construction of the Cape Town and Wellington Railway. The Consultant Engineer of the proposed line was Sir Charles Fox, who had submitted an estimated cost of £500,000 in 1851. The line was built by the Cape Town Railway and Dock Company, which was incorporated in London in 1853, with a concession to build a line from Cape Town
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...
to Wellington. Wragge was responsible, under a Resident Engineer, for work on 14 miles of the line. It is likely that it was a part of the line near Stellenbosch, where the railway arrived in 1862, for he married Lucy Eliza Carlyon, the sixteen and a half year old daughter of a Cornish Anglican clergyman there in November 1861. The railway was completed to Wellington in 1863.
Wragge then returned to England with his wife, and for a year (1862–63) he was an Assistant Engineer on the London, Chatham and Dover Railway
London, Chatham and Dover Railway
The London, Chatham and Dover Railway was a railway company in south-eastern England from 1859 until the 1923 grouping which united it with other companies to form the Southern Railway. Its lines ran through London and northern and eastern Kent to form a significant part of the Greater London...
. Then for the three years between 1863 and 1866, he became Resident Engineer in charge of the reconstruction of the approaches from Battersea
Battersea
Battersea is an area of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is an inner-city district of South London, situated on the south side of the River Thames, 2.9 miles south-west of Charing Cross. Battersea spans from Fairfield in the west to Queenstown in the east...
to Victoria Station
Victoria station (London)
Victoria station, also known as London Victoria, is a central London railway terminus and London Underground complex. It is named after nearby Victoria Street and not Queen Victoria. It is the second busiest railway terminus in London after Waterloo, and includes an air terminal for passengers...
, for the London Chatham & Dover, the London Brighton & South Coast
London, Brighton and South Coast Railway
The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1846 to 1922. Its territory formed a rough triangle, with London at its apex, practically the whole coastline of Sussex as its base, and a large part of Surrey...
, and the London & South Western Railways
London and South Western Railway
The London and South Western Railway was a railway company in England from 1838 to 1922. Its network extended from London to Plymouth via Salisbury and Exeter, with branches to Ilfracombe and Padstow and via Southampton to Bournemouth and Weymouth. It also had many routes connecting towns in...
. Sir Charles Fox & Sons engineered this complex scheme of high level lines at Battersea, and the widening of the railway bridge over the Thames.
During this period he prepared a proposal (one of several between 1850 and 1900), for a light railway
Light railway
Light railway refers to a railway built at lower costs and to lower standards than typical "heavy rail". This usually means the railway uses lighter weight track, and is more steeply graded and tightly curved to avoid civil engineering costs...
in the Rother Valley of Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
. Plans and documents developed by Sir Charles Fox and Edmund Wragge were deposited on the 30 November 1865. The line was not built until 1900 when it was constructed by Colonel Fred Stephens as the Rother Valley Railway
Rother Valley Railway
The Rother Valley Railway is the original name of what became the Kent and East Sussex Railway. Nowadays, the Rother Valley Railway refers to the ‘Missing Link’ between Robertsbridge, a station on the Tonbridge to Hastings mainline, and Bodiam on the Kent and East Sussex Railway, a heritage...
, the first of the notoriously uneconomic light railway projects that Stephens engineered. Later it became the Kent and East Sussex Railway
Kent and East Sussex Railway
The Kent & East Sussex Railway refers to both an historical private railway company in Kent and Sussex in England, as well as a heritage railway currently running on part of the route of the historical company.-Historical Company:-Background:...
, parts of which are now a preserved steam railway line.
In 1866 Wragge went into practice on his own account for three years, during which time he was Resident Engineer on the works of the Waterloo & Whitehall Railway. This was to have been a short pneumatic tube
Pneumatic tube
Pneumatic tubes are systems in which cylindrical containers are propelled through a network of tubes by compressed air or by partial vacuum...
railway in a 12 ft 9 in diameter cast iron tube under the River Thames, driven by an atmospheric engine. The line obtained an enabling act in 1865. Some tube was laid in a trench on the bed of the river, but the project was abandoned in 1868, due to the financial crisis following the failure of the Overend and Gurney
Overend, Gurney and Company
Overend, Gurney & Company was a London wholesale discount bank, known as "the bankers' bank", which collapsed in 1866 owing about 11 million pounds, equivalent to £981 million at 2008 prices.-Early years:...
railway investment bank. Part of the route is now incorporated in the Bakerloo Line
Bakerloo Line
The Bakerloo line is a line of the London Underground, coloured brown on the Tube map. It runs partly on the surface and partly at deep level, from Elephant and Castle in the south-east to Harrow & Wealdstone in the north-west of London. The line serves 25 stations, of which 15 are underground...
of London Underground
London Underground
The London Underground is a rapid transit system serving a large part of Greater London and some parts of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex in England...
.
His relationship with Sir Charles continued when Fox asked him to go to Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
in December 1868, to make a survey for a narrow gauge railway across the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast. On the basis of the survey Sir Charles Fox and Sons were to submit a bid to construct the line. Wragge took along his brother in law, Leonard Carlyon, as his assistant. After a long and difficult journey by steamer
Steamboat
A steamboat or steamship, sometimes called a steamer, is a ship in which the primary method of propulsion is steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels...
to Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
, by rail across the Isthmus
Isthmus of Panama
The Isthmus of Panama, also historically known as the Isthmus of Darien, is the narrow strip of land that lies between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, linking North and South America. It contains the country of Panama and the Panama Canal...
, another steamer to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, followed by several days in a mule train
Mule train
Mule train can refer to:*A connected line of mules*Mule Train, 1949 popular song written by Johnny Lange, Hy Heath, Doc Tommy Scott and Fred Glickman...
to the capital, San José, he was devastated to find that American contractors had beaten him by two weeks, and scooped up the contract. After fruitless negotiations to try to upset the provisional contract, Wragge and Carlyon set off back to England, but disastrously both contracted a fever in Panama, from which Carlyon died on board ship and was buried in Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
.
On his return Wragge’s letters indicate that he worked on a project in the English Midlands for some months until Sir Charles Fox secured for him the position of Chief Engineer of the Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway (TG&BR), and the Toronto and Nipissing Railway
Toronto and Nipissing Railway
The Toronto and Nipissing Railway was chartered in 1868 to build a narrow gauge railway in Ontario, Canada from Toronto to Lake Nipissing, via York, Ontario, and Victoria Counties. It opened in 1871, with service between Scarborough and Uxbridge. By December 1872 it was extended to Coboconk...
(T&NR) in July 1869. This placement must have been settled by telegram, because Douglas Fox
Charles Douglas Fox
Sir Douglas Fox was a British civil engineer.-Early life:Douglas was born in Smethwick, Staffordshire, the oldest son of Sir Charles Fox and had two brothers and a sister. Sir Charles was a civil engineer and had designed, amongst other things, The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park...
left Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
on the 27 July 1869, promising to have an engineer sent out, and Edmund Wragge departed for Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
to see Pihl’s narrow gauge railways on the 1st of August 1869. Wragge arrived in Toronto in September 1869 and between that time and late 1874 he engineered and constructed over 280 route miles of the 3 ft 6 in gauge railways, at a total cost of £900,000. The railways were built economically as a practical means of opening up the interior of the Province of Ontario to settlement.
Late in 1869 Wragge applied for membership of the Institution of Civil Engineers
Institution of Civil Engineers
Founded on 2 January 1818, the Institution of Civil Engineers is an independent professional association, based in central London, representing civil engineering. Like its early membership, the majority of its current members are British engineers, but it also has members in more than 150...
, which was granted in January 1870. He was sponsored by Sir Charles Fox, and his Candidate Circular provides not only details of his career, but also a fascinating insight into Wragge's impressive list of seconders from the railway industry, including some distinguished proponents of the narrow gauge such as Sir Henry Whatley Tyler
Henry Whatley Tyler
Sir Henry Whatley Tyler was a British Inspector of Railways, Railway Company director and Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1880 to 1892.-Early life:...
, HM’s Chief Inspector of Railways.
When the T&NR commenced operation to Uxbridge
Uxbridge, Ontario
Uxbridge is a township in south-central Ontario, Canada, in the Regional Municipality of Durham, in the Greater Toronto Area.The main centre in the township is the namesake community of Uxbridge...
in June 1871 it was the first public passenger carrying narrow gauge railway in North America, and attracted several visits from US engineers who were interested in constructing similar railways. At the first National Narrow Gauge Convention, at St. Louis
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
in June 1872, Wragge was asked to speak on his experiences, and was appointed to the Central Executive Committee. Wragge’s railways were technically innovative in their motive power
Motive power
In thermodynamics, motive power is an agency, as water or steam, used to impart motion. Generally, motive power is defined as a natural agent, as water, steam, wind, electricity, etc., used to impart motion to machinery; a motor; a mover. The term may also define something, as a locomotive or a...
, using large ‘Fairlie’ articulated types for freight haulage; and purchasing numbers of powerful and successful British 4-6-0
4-6-0
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 4-6-0 represents the wheel arrangement of four leading wheels on two axles in a leading truck, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles, and no trailing wheels. This wheel arrangement became the second-most popular...
types, 24 years before such locomotive
Locomotive
A locomotive is a railway vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. The word originates from the Latin loco – "from a place", ablative of locus, "place" + Medieval Latin motivus, "causing motion", and is a shortened form of the term locomotive engine, first used in the early 19th...
s were first accepted in Britain (on the Highland Railway
Highland Railway
The Highland Railway was one of the smaller British railways before the Railways Act 1921; it operated north of Perth railway station in Scotland and served the farthest north of Britain...
in 1894). Wragge described the railways in two technical papers, written for the Institution of Civil Engineers.
In 1875 he gave up his position with the T&NR in order to become the General Manager of the TG&BR, and the respect he had earned is reflected publicly in the minutes of the T&NR Annual General Meeting
Annual general meeting
An annual general meeting is a meeting that official bodies, and associations involving the public , are often required by law to hold...
of that year. Wragge was appointed Toronto Area Manager for the Grand Trunk Railway
Grand Trunk Railway
The Grand Trunk Railway was a railway system which operated in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario, as well as the American states of Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The railway was operated from headquarters in Montreal, Quebec; however, corporate...
(GTR) on October 8, 1883, by the General Manager, Joseph Hickson
Joseph Hickson
Sir Joseph Hickson was a Canadian railway executive. He was Secretary-Treasurer, and afterwards President, of the GrandTrunk Railway Company of Canada. He was knighted by Queen Victoria 20 January 1890....
. Wragge was well known to Sir Henry Tyler, by now President of the GTR. By the 1880s the splendid 2nd Union Station
Union Station (Toronto)
Union Station is the major inter-city rail station and a major commuter rail hub in Toronto, located on Front Street West and occupying the south side of the block bounded by Bay Street and York Street in the central business district. The station building is owned by the City of Toronto, while the...
at Toronto, completed in 1873, was becoming inadequate and more tracks and a larger station building were needed. Wragge was the chief engineer and head of construction for this expansion which was completed in 1895.
Wragge returned occasionally to Britain during this period and a letter in his 1883 correspondence indicates that he was working there with Sir Charles Fox and Sons on negotiations for the building of the Quebec North Shore Railway
Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway
The Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway is a Canadian regional railway that stretches through the wilderness of northeastern Quebec and western Labrador. It connects Labrador City, Labrador, with the port of Sept-Îles, Quebec, on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River...
. Sir William Cornelius Van Horne
William Cornelius Van Horne
Sir William Cornelius Van Horne, KCMG was a pioneering Canadian railway executive.-Life and career:Born in 1843 in rural Illinois, he moved with his family to Joliet, Illinois when he was eight years old...
, the President of the Canadian Pacific Railway
Canadian Pacific Railway
The Canadian Pacific Railway , formerly also known as CP Rail between 1968 and 1996, is a historic Canadian Class I railway founded in 1881 and now operated by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001...
(CPR) asked Wragge in 1888 to act as an arbitrator in compensation negotiations between the CPR and the Canadian Government. His work on the rebuilding of Union Station and continued association with Douglas Fox led to his return to Britain, at the age of 60 in 1896, to participate in the building of the last main line into central London
Central London
Central London is the innermost part of London, England. There is no official or commonly accepted definition of its area, but its characteristics are understood to include a high density built environment, high land values, an elevated daytime population and a concentration of regionally,...
, that of the Great Central Railway
Great Central Railway
The Great Central Railway was a railway company in England which came into being when the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway changed its name in 1897 in anticipation of the opening in 1899 of its London Extension . On 1 January 1923, it was grouped into the London and North Eastern...
. Construction of this heavily engineered connection commenced in late 1894, of which the most difficult part was to drive a mainline railway through the London suburbs to a terminus at Marylebone
Marylebone station
Marylebone station , also known as London Marylebone, is a central London railway terminus and London Underground complex. It stands midway between the mainline stations at Euston and Paddington, about 1 mile from each...
. This was the section for which Sir Charles Fox and Sons were the consultants. Edmund Wragge was the Resident Engineer from 1897 to 1899 and lived in the St Marylebone district, close to the construction works. The completion of the line in March 1899 was marked by the presentation of several technical papers to the Institution of Civil Engineers. G. A. Hobson and Edmund Wragge gave a lengthy and detailed paper in November 1900 describing the engineering and construction of the approaches to Marylebone Station. The Institution Of Civil Engineers awarded Wragge and Hobson the Telford Medal
Telford Medal
The Telford Medal is the highest prize awarded by the British Institution of Civil Engineers for a paper, or series of papers, in the field of engineering. It was introduced in 1835 following a bequest made by Thomas Telford, the ICE's first president....
and Premiums for this work. Hobson is credited with the design of the great railway bridge of 1905 over the Zambezi River at Victoria Falls
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
Victoria Falls is a town in the province of Matabeleland North, Zimbabwe. It lies on the southern bank of the Zambezi River at the western end of the Victoria Falls themselves...
.
Edmund Wragge returned to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
in 1904, and was in private practice until he retired in 1914. He died in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, on November 26, 1929, aged 93.