Thomas Brassey

Thomas Brassey ( born November 7, 1805 in Buerton in Chester, . † December 8, 1870 in Hastings -St Leonards -on-Sea ) was an entrepreneur and engineer who promoted the emerging railway mainly. In the middle of his life, in 1847, a third of the railway construction fell to its plans. When he died, one twentieth of the world's railways had arisen under his leadership.

Family

Brassey came from a Middle English middle-class family that could trace their family history very far: His ancestors had immigrated with William the Conqueror from Normandy and had settled in the area of Chester. Thomas was the eldest son of a successful farmer John Brassey and his wife Elisabeth, and attended Mr. Harting 's School in Chester.

Career

Brassey was very early interested in solving technical issues. He was a surveyor and has worked with less than 20 years under the famous master builder Thomas Telford, who was the Holyhead Road, the access road to Birmingham built. At age 21, he became a junior partner of his former instructor for surveyor, William Lawton. Both from then on operated as " Lawton and Brassey ". They moved their headquarters to Birkenhead on the opposite side of Liverpool; the place was at that time barely out of four houses. The business prospered, but Lawton died soon, so Brassey held the company line alone.

1834 Brassey came with George Stephenson, a little later with his pupil Joseph Locke in contact, who wanted to buy him material for railway construction. Only for the second call he got from Stephenson 1835 the contract for a viaduct between Stafford and Wolverhampton. After this successful company many followed, today important railway lines for many different railway companies across the UK, before moving onto the European mainland early 1840s.

International work

His first job was in 1841 the railway line between Paris and Rouen, which should be a geographical continuation of Britain's railways. In mediation Locke the tender for this route was operated by him and his compatriot and competitor William Mackenzie. Rather than to undercut each other, they gave off a joint bid, which was accepted. For this case Brassey learned the importance of strategic partnerships and nursed her life. In the following years, they built together over 700 km in France, the longest stretch 473 km from Orléans to Bordeaux.

During the construction of the route Rouen -Le Havre in 1846 one of the few major technical accidents in the constructions Brassey happened: The 30 -meter high, made ​​of bricks Barentin viaduct collapsed after the first big rain in on itself. The cause has not been determined, but it is believed that the quality of the lime and the mixing ratio of the mortar was wrong. The £ 50,000 expensive building was Brassey at his own expense and build again under its own supervision. The viaduct is still used for its intended purpose.

Due to a financial crisis, the orders in France initially fell sharply, so that the builder looked elsewhere. He went first to Spain in 1848, then to Italy, where each smaller projects were realized. After 1856 he built in the Netherlands and the German Niederrhein the Dutch- Rhenish Railway, which represented an early railway project of the Dutch. These were skeptical because of their outstandingly well-developed canal and river network of the railways long time. He then again took orders in France. In between, he realized again and again even buildings in his home country.

Early as 1852 Thomas Brassey was the biggest project of his life assumed the 876 km long Grand Trunk Railway along the St. Lawrence River in Canada. These built the longest bridge existing at that time, among other things, the three -kilometer Victoria Bridge in Montreal. The construction of the line was a pioneering and technically successful, for the client but the company was financially a disaster; he lost it a million English pounds.

In the contract, the delivery of rolling stock was included. Brassey founded on to its headquarters in Birkenhead, the company " The Canadian Works", who led his brother in law. This site was ideal because directly deep-sea vessels could be loaded there. In eight years, he has delivered more than 300 locomotives. The steel construction of the Victoria Bridge was made ​​in England. It consisted of about 10,000 steel beams, that have been drilled in the production and connected in place of half a million rivets.

His next project was the "Great Crimean Central Railway" ( Great Crimean Central Railway ), the port city of Balaklava Association as the world's first Strategic train with the British positions south of Sevastopol. Under the direction Brassey was started in September 1854 with the construction of the eleven -kilometer route. Even after seven weeks, in time for the beginning of winter this was completed. So later succeeded British troops in alliance with the French and the Turks a year to defeat the previously Russian Black Sea port city.

Activities away from the railway

The work Brassey was not limited only to the railways and their environment. In addition to its factory in Birkenhead, he built another plant in France, to which he had delivered the materials for its various jobs on the European mainland. He built a number of sewage plants in the UK and a water mill in Calcutta. In addition, some dry docks go in different English cities, including the Royal Victoria Dock in London, back to its activity.

Brassey assisted Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859) financially in the construction of his ship "The Leviathan ", which was later renamed the Great Eastern was 1854 and six times larger than any other ship built up to that world.

Still other ideas drove the business to: He created plans for a tunnel under the English Channel, which were firmly rejected by both British and by the European governments. Another plan took a cross- channel to be configured by the Isthmus of Panama; which has also been considered unfeasible. Also in this respect was far ahead of his time Brassey.

Brassey 's last years

From 1867 Brassey health deteriorated. Previously, he had routes in South America (400 km), Australia ( about 200 km), Nepal ( 800 km ) and Austria - Hungary planned and directed the construction. In 1868, he suffered a mild stroke, but he continued to work. In April, after he collapsed at a vast East Asian tour. As of 1870, he withdrew from all the shops, but occasionally visited his construction sites. Even when he was bedridden from late summer of 1870, he received numerous visitors, colleagues and employees who paid him their respects. He died on December 8, 1870 at the Victoria Hotel in St. Leonards and left a fortune of 3.2 million, other sources indicate that as many as seven million pounds. He was considered one of the richest " self-made men" in the Victorian era, but a pompous lifestyle was always away him. By the end of his life he was responsible for the planning or construction of more than 4800 km of railway network in continental Europe and nearly 2500 km outside of Europe.

His eldest son, Thomas Brassey (1836-1918) began a successful career in politics and was governor of the Australian state of Victoria.