Not being one of those fortunate individuals who are said to be born with a silver spoon in their mouth, I was forced to undertake responsible work in the year of the Railway Mania (1845), before I reached the age of seventeen, after a very brief course of instruction at King’s College. Both in that year and 1846 I did considerable work on Parliamentary Surveys. In 1847, Mr. Brassey was good enough to give me a position on the North Staffordshire Railway, and I remained upon his staff for seven years; the last two being spent upon his great contract for the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada. For a further seven years I remained in Canada, constructing railways for the Governments of the Lower Provinces, and I returned home, after an absence of nine years, in 1861.
In 1863 I made some extensive surveys for railways in Russia. In 1864 and 1865, further surveys and explorations in Egypt and the Soudan, passing as far south as Metammeh, 100 miles north of Khartoum. On my return to England in the spring of 1865, I was offered and accepted the management of the construction of the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways for the three firms who had jointly undertaken the contract, namely, Messrs. Peto and Betts, John Kelk, and Waring Brothers. The construction of these lines from Edgware Road
