Charles Sacré

Sacre retired in 1886 and committed suicide by shooting himself, reputedly due to the Penistone rail crash of 1884.He was articled to Archibald Sturrock at the Great Northern Railway works at Boston, Lincolnshire in 1846, and upon the completion of the apprenticeship, he was appointed Assistant Locomotive Superintendent at Peterborough.He was responsible for an outstanding series of double framed 0-6-0 goods engines, the largest of which were a class of sixty built in 1880-5.In the realm of civil engineering, he suggested extending the then main line by a tunnel under the Humber to Hull, but this brought him into conflict with Edward Watkin, the Company Chairman.Although no blame could possibly be attached to Sacre, he felt responsible, partly because he had given in to pressure from Watkin to adopt the Smith non-automatic brake.