Percy Sedgfield
Percy Sedgfield (c1869-1940)
1940 Obituary [1]
PERCY SEDGFIELD served his time as a premium apprentice at the Great Western Railway Works, Swindon, from 1885 until 1890, when he was appointed assistant to the locomotive superintendent of the Central Uruguay Railway Company, in Montevideo.
In 1899 he was appointed chief mechanical engineer to the same company, a post which he held until his retirement in 1930. He visited Mexico and the U.S.A. in 1912, in order to study the question of oil as fuel for steam locomotives. As a result of his report this type of fuel was adopted on the Central Uruguay Railway, where it has become standard practice. Mr. Sedgfield was the author of two technical papers, published in 1922 and 1927, dealing respectively with continuous brakes for goods trains, and locomotive derailments.
He died in Montevideo on 14th November 1939, in his seventy-first year. He had been a Member of the Institution since 1924.