Charles Cheffins

Charles Frederick Cheffins (10 September 1807 – 22 October 1861)[1] was a British mechanical draughtsman, cartographer, consulting engineer, and surveyor.

Cheffins was born in London, where his father was the manager of the New River Waterworks Company and supervised the manufacturing of wooden pipes used to supply water to the metropolis.

[2] Upon completion of his education, he was apprenticed to Messrs. Newton and Son, patent agents and mechanical draughtsmen, where he became practised in making drawings from specifications and from models of machinery.

[3] On the completion of the parliamentary submissions for the Grand Junction Railway, between 1832 and 1833, he set up his own cartographical and drawing business,[4] and spent over two decades working as a surveyor for numerous railroad construction projects in the United Kingdom.

[a] His death, at the age of fifty-four, was said to have greatly impacted his friends, colleagues, and assistants, who had served under him in the numerous parliamentary campaigns in which he had been engaged – and to many of whom he had shown much kindness in recommending them to posts of trust and responsibility on the Indian Railways.

Cheffins was present at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and remained some time longer with Captain Ericsson, making drawings for other inventions, among which was a steam fire-engine and a caloric engine – machines which gained public attention, the former of which coming into general use.

[2] In 1830, Cheffins reputation was such that he testified for the "defendants" in the patent infringement case of Lord Galloway and Alexander Cochrane versus John Braithwaite and John Ericsson, in the Court of Chancery, where it was alleged that the boilers of the Novelty locomotive were of a type too similar to a design of the plaintiffs and where the Lord Chancellor found for the defendants.

Cheffins' first occupation under Stephenson was the preparation of the plans and sections of the projected Grand Junction Railway, which was to connect the towns of Birmingham and Liverpool; and his persevering industry was noticed by, among other eminent engineers, Joseph Locke, Frederick Swanwick, Daniel Gooch.

Robert Stephenson, the son of George, was among the latter, and under his direction and superintendence, Cheffins prepared many of the designs for the construction of the bridges on the London and Birmingham Railway.

The last initiative Cheffins was a part of was the projected Great Eastern Northern Junction Railway Bill of 1860, (known familiarly as the "Coal Line"), which his friend George Parker Bidder had put in his hands.

This son was later involved in laying out the Midland Railway between Bedford and London,[17] and prepared plans for the proposed line between Sittingbourne and Maidstone.

[18] He retired to Kent in 1880, served as a County Councillor there[19] and co-founded the Gillingham Portland Cement Company, of which he became Managing Director.

There was no vessel containing a column of water attached to the said boiler, but that, on the contrary, there was a considerable quantity of smoke issuing out from the upper extremity of the upright open pipe or chimney (Y).

That deponent farther observed, that the ante-chamber or magazine through which the furnace was supplied with fuel was not surrounded by water, as represented in the plaintiffs' specification and drawing.