Richard Mansell

Richard Christopher Mansell (1814, Liverpool – 1904, London) was an English railway engineer.

Mansell was carriage superintendent for the South Eastern Railway at Ashford by 1851, and later works manager for the SER. In 1877 he succeeded Alfred Mellor Watkins as locomotive superintendent of the SER; when James Stirling was appointed in 1878, Mansell resumed the post of works manager until his retirement from the SER in January 1882. On leaving, he was given an annual consultancy fee/pension of fifty quineas.

As locomotive superintendent, Mansell was responsible for the design of a dozen locomotives: 9 x 0-4-4T [1878] and 3 x 0-6-0 [completed 1879, 7 others cancelled] . Three 0-6-0Ts that had been designed by Cudworth were also completed under Mansell's supervision in 1877. None of his engines had a distinguished service life. The tanks lasted about 12 years and the 0-6-0s about twice that.

Mansell's first wife, Elizabeth, died in 1873, aged 56. He married again, in 1874, to Emmeline Aldgate Clark, a widow, who died in 1912.

References

* D. L. Bradley, "The Locomotives of the South Eastern Railway"
* A Gray, "South Eastern Railway"
* UK Census Returns
* Records of the Registrar for Births, Deaths & Marriages