Edward William Young, a civil engineer who specialized in railway infrastructure throughout the British Empire, was the son of Henry Young and his wife Rosina Frances, born Martin. He studied at King's College, London, where he completed a three year course in applied science, after which he completed an apprenticeship of four years from 1853 to 1857. He was one of six engineers who were brought to the Cape Colony from Britain by the engineer W.G. Brounger* to build the first railway in the Colony. The other five engineers were J. Bisset*, W. Perrolt, A. Priestley, J.W. Roberts, and W.B. Taylor. They arrived on the Athens in December 1858. The line started at Cape Town and was completed to Wellington in 1862. Young was responsible for a section of some six kilometers.
From 1863 to 1869 Young was manager of the office of C. Fox and Sons with duties equivalent to those of a resident engineer. In 1868 he was awarded a patent for improvements in the construction of bridges. He became a member of the (British) Institution of Civil Engineers in 1872. Around this time he was working in Nova Scotia, Canada. The next year he published Simple practical methods of calculating strains on girders and trusses; with a supplementary essay on economy in suspensions bridges (1873, 132pp). He was again at the Cape by 1876 and during 1880-1883 was a member of the South African Philosophical Society. In June 1880 he read a paper before the society, "On surveying with the omnimeter", and exhibited the instrument. [Eckhold's omnimeter was a theodolite fitted with a microscope with which the tangents of vertical arcs could be read on a linear scale]. Years later he returned to this topic, presenting a paper on "Surveying with the omnimeter" before the Institution of Civil Engineers. The paper was published in the Institution's Minutes of Proceedings for 1894. Meanwhile, at the next meeting of the South African Philosophical Society in July 1880, he spoke on the possible introduction of trout into the rivers of the Colony, pointing out the low water temperatures required for them to breed successfully.
By 1886 Young resided in London and then moved to Sydney, Australia. He published a paper on the construction of a graving dock in Sydney harbour in the Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1893. He was working in Perth, Australia, in 1896, but by 1906 had returned to the Cape Colony and resided in Cape Town. By 1911 he was living in London.
In 1860 Young married Geraldine Lloyd but they had no children.
