David Carnegie Andrew Agnew

“ On his arrival in England, young Vignoles was educated by his grandfather, who at first destined him for the bar, but in 1811 he was transferred from a lawyer’s office to the Royal Military Academy of Sandhurst. ”

“ Vignoles married in 1817, and sailed for America, in the hope of recovering the family estate. In this he was disappointed, but was employed profitably in surveying the country for about five years. He returned to England in 1822, and began his career as a Civil Engineer. He was engaged in the construction of railways in almost every kingdom of Europe; it was he who surveyed the line between Liverpool and Manchester in 1824. He was engineer-in-chief of the first Irish railway — Dublin and Kingstown, — which was opened in December 1834. He invented the Vignoles rail. ”

“ In 1847, and the five following years, he was chief engineer to the Emperor of Russia, and constructed the Suspension Bridge at Kieff, over the river Dnieper, the longest of its kind in the world. He was also engineer-in-chief to the Emperor of Brazil and the Queen of Spain. ”