John Wakefield
John Wakefield (1812-1882)
1863 John Wakefield, Locomotive Department, Great Southern and Western Railway, Dublin.[1]
1882 February 4th. Died.[2]
1883 Obituary [3]
JOHN WAKEFIELD was born on 31st December 1812 at West Moor, near Newcastle-on-Tyne.
In 1830 he became connected with the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and some years afterwards went to the London and Birmingham Railway, being stationed at Watford in charge of the repairing of the ballast engines &c.
In 1838 he was appointed locomotive superintendent of the London and Greenwich Railway; and in 1845 took a similar position on the Birkenhead Lancashire and Cheshire Junction Railway, where he remained until 1848.
He was then appointed to a position in the locomotive department of the Great Southern and Western Railway of Ireland.
In 1865 be became locomotive superintendent of the Dublin Wicklow and Wexford Railway, which position he held until his death on 4th February 1882, in the seventieth year of his age. During his long connection with railways he was the inventor of very valuable improvements in the locomotive &c., one of these being the single-eccentric valve-motion, of which a description was given to the Institution in 1855 (Proceedings 1855, p. 146).
He became a Member of the Institution in 1863.