William Danvers Waghorn

William Danvers Waghorn was the son of Surgeon-Major A R Waghorn, of Redhill, Surrey. He was commissioned in the Royal Engineers on 16 February 1887. His first posting was to Queen Victoria’s Own Sappers and Miners in Bangalore. This began his long association with India. His long association with railways began two years later, in December 1899, when he was appointed to the Indian Railway Department at Madras.

By 1914 Waghorn had established himself as one of the Army’s and the Empire’s leading experts in the construction and operation of railways. He was Deputy Assistant Director of Railways during the South African War (1899–1902), Deputy Manager, North Western Railways, Lahore (1907–11) and Inspector of Railways Northern and Southern Nigeria (1911–12).

As chance had it, Danvers was in England when the war broke out. He was immediately appointed Deputy-Director of Railway Transport BEF. He followed this was appointments as Deputy Director Railway Construction (October 1915) and Director of Railways (22 November 1916–2 May 1917). His final appointment was as Chief Engineer XVII Corps, which he held from 19 November 1917 until the end of the war. XVII Corps was the only corps whose headquarters did not retreat during the German spring offensive of March-April 1918. This owed much to the excellence of the corps’ engineering arrangements that had created a defence in depth that the Germans were not able to penetrate. After the war Waghorn returned to India, where he became a Member of the Railway Board. He was knighted in 1923 and retired in July 1924.