Cecil Paget

Sir Cecil Walter Paget CMG DSO (19 October 1874 – 9 December 1936), was a British locomotive engineer and railway administrator. Cecil Paget was the son of Sir George Ernest Paget, Chairman of the Midland Railway Company (MR) 1890-1911. He was born at Sutton Bonington, educated at Harrow and Pembroke College, Cambridge, 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 from 1904, under Johnson's successor R. M. Deeley. He was also Deeley's deputy.

April 1907 saw Paget appointed General Superintendent of the MR by the new General Manager Guy Granet. The role, which would now be called Chief Operating Officer, 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.

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.

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.

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