Charles Fox (engineer, born 1810)
British civil engineer and railway contractor (1810-1874)
Sir Charles Fox (11 March 1810 – 11 June 1874) was an English civil engineer and contractor. His work focused on railways, railway stations and bridges.
Biography
Born in Derby in 1810, Charles Fox was the youngest of five sons of Dr. Francis Fox. Initially trained to follow his father's career, he abandoned medical training at age 19 and became articled to John Ericsson, working with him and John Braithwaite on the Novelty locomotive, which he drove in the Rainhill trials on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. He acquired a taste for locomotive driving and was employed on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, being present at its opening.
In 1830, Fox married Mary, second daughter of Joseph Brookhouse, by whom he had three sons and a daughter. Two of his sons, Francis Fox and Charles Douglas Fox, also became engineers.
Railways
One of his earliest inventions, patented in 1838, was railway points, which superseded the sliding rail used up to that time.
In 1837 Robert Stephenson appointed him as one of the engineers on the London and Birmingham Railway, where he was responsible for Watford tunnel and the incline down from Camden Town to Euston.
“Charles Fox (engineer, born 1810)” enters the record as british civil engineer and railway contractor (1810-1874). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Charles, engineer and born can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Charles Fox (engineer, born 1810)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Charles, engineer and born provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1064402. VIAF identifies the subject as 937160. The Library of Congress control number is no94028074. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1810, 1874, 1830 and 1838.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles Fox (engineer, born 1810)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.