George Findlay (railwayman)

Sir George Findlay (18 May 1829 – 26 March 1893) was general manager of the London and North Western Railway in nineteenth century England.

Findlay was born at Rainhill in Lancashire on 18 May 1829, was the younger son of George Findlay (d. 1858) of Grantown, Inverness, by his wife Agnes (d. 1835), daughter of Henry Courtenay of Glasgow. His father, descended from a family of small tenant farmers residing at Coltfield in the parish of Alves in Elgin, became an inspector of masonry under the great engineer, George Stephenson, and was engaged in building the well-known skew bridge near Rainhill at the time of his son's birth. The younger George resided with his father successively at Liverpool, Coventry, and Halifax, where he attended the grammar school. At the age of fourteen he left school and worked as a mason on the Halifax branch railway, then in course of construction. Two years later he was assistant to his elder brother James on the Trent Valley Railway. The brothers were in the employ of Thomas Brassey, with whom George remained connected for seventeen years. Brassey early appreciated his abilities, and afterwards gave him opportunity to use them. On the completion of the Trent Valley line in 1847, Findlay proceeded to London, and entered the service of Messrs. Bransome & Gwyther, contractors, by whom he was employed in building the new engine sheds of the London and North Western Railway Company at Camden Town, and the 'Round House' at Chalk Farm. He afterwards was engaged, under Messrs. Grissel & Peto, in building the new houses of parliament, and fashioned with his own hand much of the stone tracery of the great window at the east end of Westminster Hall. Within a year he left London and found employment till 1849 under Brassey's agent, Thomas Jones, in the construction of the Harecastle tunnel on the North Staffordshire Railway. On the completion of this work he undertook the contract for building the principal tunnel entrances, and was for a short time in charge of the construction of the bridges on the Churnet Valley branch of the North Staffordshire Railway between Froghall and Alton. Before the close of 1849 Brassey appointed him assistant engineer under his agent, Miles Day, in charge of the mining and brickwork of the Walton or Sutton tunnel on the Birkenhead, Lancashire, and Cheshire Railway. In 1850, when Messrs. Brassey & Field commenced the construction of the first section of the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway between Hereford and Ludlow, Findlay was appointed engineer and superintended the making of the line. On its completion in April 1852 Brassey, deciding to take a lease of it and work it himself, offered Findlay the post of manager, which he accepted after some hesitation. Brassey placed implicit confidence in him, seldom troubling himself about the details of the accounts, and only inquiring, 'George, have you got enough money in the bank to pay the rent?' In 1853, when the railway was extended from Ludlow to Hereford, it formed a connection with the Newport, Abergavenny, and Hereford Railway, which the London and North Western Company had undertaken to work. Brassey contracted to supply the locomotive power on this line, and Findlay thus first came into relations with the London and North Western Company.

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