Harold Arthur William Langdon
Harold Arthur William Langdon (c1878-1945)
1946 Obituary [1]
HAROLD ARTHUR WILLIAM LANGDON had considerable experience as a locomotive engineer in South America and the West Indies. He received his general education at Bedford School and his technical training at the Liverpool Institute and at Finsbury Technical College. His apprenticeship was served from 1896 to 1899 at the Kentish Town depot of the Midland Railway, and after 18 months' experience at sea as junior engineer he returned to the service of the former railway company as a fitter for a brief period.
He then went to South America where he was first employed as chief mechanic in charge of the repair shops of the London and Pacific Petroleum Company in Peru. In 1903 he was appointed assistant locomotive superintendent of the Bolivar Railway of Venezuela and two years later was promoted to the post of superintendent. After acting in the same capacity for the Zafra-Huelva Railway Company of Spain for two years, he resumed his former position with the Bolivar Railway Company.
In 1919 he received an appointment as assistant to the locomotive superintendent of the United Railways of Havana and began a connection which lasted for twenty-five years. Since 1921 he had been divisional locomotive superintendent for the Cuban Central Division.
Mr. Langdon, whose death in his sixty-seventh year occurred, on 31st July 1945, shortly after his retirement, was elected a Graduate of the Institution in 1898 and was transferred to Associate Membership in 1904 and to Membership in 1926.