Charles Collett

Charles Benjamin Collett (1871 to 1952) was a British railway engineer who served as Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Western Railway from 1922 to 1941. He is best known for designing the GWR's celebrated express passenger locomotives, most notably the Castle class and the King class. The King class became the heaviest and most powerful 4-6-0 type locomotive built in Britain at the time, and its performance pushed competing railway companies to develop more powerful designs of their own. Collett was primarily a developmental engineer rather than a radical innovator, refining and expanding the locomotive designs of his predecessor G.J. Churchward into a standardized fleet well suited to the Great Western Railway's operations across southern and western England and Wales. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and the City and Guilds Engineering College, was appointed OBE for his engineering work, and was succeeded as Chief Mechanical Engineer by Frederick Hawksworth. Collett was born on 10 September 1871 and died on 5 April 1952 at the age of 80.