Lightly Stapleton Simpson
Lightly Stapleton Simpson (c1873-1942)
1896 of Trinity College, Cambridge
1943 Obituary [1]
LIGHTLY STAPLETON SIMPSON. C.B.E.. D.S.O., was associated with the working and management of railways, both at home and abroad, during the whole of his distinguished career. He was the grandson of the late Mr. Lightly Simpson, a former deputy chairman of the Great Eastern Railway, and was educated at Charterhouse and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in engineering in 1895. After completing three years' apprenticeship in the locomotive, carriage, and wagon shops of the Great Eastern Railway he entered the drawing office and remained in the service of that company until 1907, being successively assistant district locomotive superintendent, manager of the wagon department, and finally in charge of the electrification of the locomotive, carriage, and wagon shops at Stratford.
He then went to South America, where he was assistant locomotive superintendent of the Buenos Ayres and Pacific Railway and five years later was made running superintendent of the same department. In 1915 he returned to England and was gazetted captain in the Royal Engineers (T.), operating division. He served in France where he was responsible for the erection and maintenance of wagons. Later, he was appointed chief mechanical engineer in charge of five military railway works, and for his services he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order.
On his retirement with the rank of colonel in 1919 he became chief mechanical engineer in the Ministry of Transport, a position which he occupied until 1922, when he returned to the Argentine to take up the appointment of chief mechanical engineer of the Cordoba Central Railway. His last position was that of general manager of the United Railways of Havana, retiring after some ten years service in December 1939.
Mr. Simpson, whose death occurred at Gullane, East Lothian, on 6th September 1942, in his sixty-ninth year, became a Graduate of the Institution in 1894, and was transferred to Associate Membership in 1900 and to Membership in 1922. He was also an Associate Member of the Institutions of Civil Engineers and Electrical Engineers.