Edgar Claxton

Edgar Claxton (7 July 1910 – 13 August 2000) was an English rail engineer. He worked for the British Railways Board and was part of the team which electrified parts of the United Kingdom's mainline railway network in the 1960s. He was responsible for "design and procurement of all the equipment, and for the electrification side of the projects". He was made an MBE in 1969 for his work.

Edgar Claxton's parents were Edgar "Ted" Claxton, and Nellie Mildred "Helen" Petty. They married on 1 August 1908, in Hammersmith. Ted was a poor law settlement officer, working around the country from the offices of St Marylebone Workhouse. At the same time he was registrar for births and deaths for Marylebone parish, working from an office in his home, as did his father Jesse. Helen was a music teacher, and the honorary piano accompanist for the Northwood Choral Society. A year after Helen's death, Ted Claxton married Mary Browning Eustance in Edmonton on 24 April 1946.

Edgar Claxton was born in Marylebone on 7 July 1910, and died in Oxford on 13 August 2000. He first appeared in the newspapers at the age of two years, having attended a family wedding. He attended Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, and in 1939 he gained First Class Honours in engineering at University College London. On 11 July 1928, soon after Claxton's 18th birthday, a motor car driven by Edgar Claxton of Roy Road, Northwood, who had "driven for a year, and previously driven a motor cycle", was involved in a collision with a motor cycle in Northwood. The pillion rider of the motorcycle, 19-year-old Beatrice Davis, died. At the inquest of 20 July 1928 it was found that the car had stopped before the impact, the motor cyclist had been driving too fast, and that Edgar Claxton was "exonerated from all blame". The verdict was "accidental death".

Between 1952 and 1975 Claxton was living at 47 Grange Gardens, Pinner. He married Elizabeth "Betty" Welsh. They had several children. In 1996 he was the sponsor and main benefactor to St Laurence Church, Shotteswell, Warwickshire, when the six bells of the church were matched, re-tuned and re-hung, following long disuse. He is buried in Shotteswell churchyard.

Claxton's first employment was with the engineering firm Kennedy & Donkin. This involved him with projects "mostly for generating and sub-stations, overhead lines and cables", including work in Northern Ireland and "construction of the National Grid in Scotland". In 1937 Claxton became a technical assistant, appointed by Sir Nigel Gresley to the London North Eastern Railway (LNER). This appointment involved "dealing with power supply and 33kV distribution systems and associated equipment for the impending Manchester–Sheffield and Liverpool Street–Sheffield electrical systems, and other works". In 1939 he was living in lodgings with other LNER staff at 11 North Road, Glossop, describing himself as a civil and electrical engineer, LNER traction staff.

As an essential railway worker he did not do military service in World War II. Instead, he worked for the Admiralty Dockyard Department. Here, he "looked after planning, specifications and contracts for electrical distribution systems for dock works both at home and abroad".

After the war, Claxton was again employed by LNER as senior technical assistant in the Electric Traction Section, "handling contracts for electric locomotives and rolling stock", developing diesel and electric shunting locomotives. He was involved in running trials in Zeist, Utrecht, for some years, with respect to Gresley's prototype electrical locomotive Tommy, LNER no.6701.

By the end of 1951, Claxton was the assistant electrification engineer for the MSW electrification scheme, based at Dukinfield, "supervising all branches of the MSW electrification project from end to end", including Scotland. He was working with Metropolitan Vickers & Co., "installing electrical equipment into the newly formed fleet of locomotives for the re-started 1936 programme", i.e. the project plans in which he had been involved before the war. From 1952, Claxton was the assistant electrical engineer (development), for the chief electrical engineer's department, British Railways central staff, British Transport Commission (BTC). Following pioneer electrification of the Aix-les-Bains to La Roche-sur-Foron line, and the Valenciennes to Thionville line in 1954, the BTC asked Edgar Claxton to chair a "committee to review electrification strategy for main lines".