Harold Winthrop Clapp

Sir Harold Winthrop Clapp KBE (7 May 1875 – 21 October 1952) was a transport administrator who over the course of thirty years had a profound effect on Australia's railway network. In two decades as its Chairman of Commissioners, he revolutionised Victorian Railways, with unprecedented attention to customer service and innovations such as more powerful locomotives, air-conditioned carriages, and faster services culminating in the introduction of the flagship Spirit of Progress express train. Seconded to the federal government in World War II, he played a pivotal role in the manufacture of fighter aircraft in the defence of Australia. As Director-General of Australia's Land Transport Board, he presented a report on railway gauge standardisation that ultimately led to the eventual linking of all Australian mainland capital cities by a uniform track gauge.

Early life and career abroad Born in St Kilda, Victoria, Harold Clapp was the son of Cobb and Co coach operator and future Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Company owner Francis Boardman Clapp and wife Isabella Pinnock, née Pierce. He was educated at Brighton Grammar and Melbourne Church of England Grammar schools, before serving an apprenticeship at the Austral Otis Engineering Co. and later taking charge of motive power in his father's Brisbane Tramway Co. Ltd.

In 1900 Clapp left for the United States of America, first obtaining work at the General Electric Co. He was then engaged by the Interborough Rapid Transit Co., and among other work was in charge of electrification of the West Jersey and Seashore division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. On 19 September 1906 at Providence, Rhode Island, he married Gertrude Vivien, daughter of Judge Arthur Noel of Brisbane. In 1908 he moved to Columbus, Ohio and joined the Southern Pacific Railroad. By 1920, he was a Vice President of the Southern Pacific, as well as the Columbus Railway Power and Light Co and Illinois' East St. Louis and Suburban Railway. He was possessed of a remarkable memory and learnt the names and faces of many thousands of railway employees.

His normally unsmiling face masked the fact that Clapp did have a sense of humour. He shared his awareness of people making use of his surname's unfortunate association with "the clap", a sexually transmitted infection: when addressing a group of railwaymen he said, "I know what you fellows call me behind my back. My brother has a farm at Ouyen. One day, he called in at the railway station and found the stationmaster and porter cleaning up the place. When my brother asked them what they were doing, the stationmaster replied, 'Didn't you know? The Bloody Disease is coming tomorrow for an inspection.'"

The "Reso" and Better Farming Trains Clapp was notable for his support and assistance to the farming sector. This reflected not only a desire to boost rail traffic through increased farm production and customer demand, but also a belief that the role and social responsibilities of the Victorian Railways as an organisation went far greater than simply the provision of transport.

Motive power improvements

At the time that Harold Clapp took over, the VR goods locomotive fleet was almost completely of 19th century designs that were largely obsolete. With a large fleet of relatively new A2 class locomotives available, there was far less development of new passenger locomotives during the Clapp era. Even so, the two classes that were ordered during his time (the 3-cylinder S and H classes) were of unprecedented size, power and technical innovation.

As an efficiency measure, Clapp dispensed with the "Canadian Red" locomotive livery introduced by his predecessor Sir Thomas Tait, replacing it with a plain black livery that required less cleaning. In other key developments that drew on his US railroad experience, he oversaw the introduction of electric lighting on VR locomotives and the fitting of auto-couplers. In 1935 Clapp raised the maximum line speed limit on Victorian Railways from 60 to 70 mph (96 to 112 km/h) and the Flier subsequently ran to Geelong on a 55-minute timetable. The public relations success of the Flier was reflected by the train's name entering the local lexicon as a metaphor for speed; former Geelong Football Club player Bob Davis was nicknamed "The Geelong Flier"; and even in 2005 current player David Wojcinski was said to "run like the Geelong Flier of yesteryear".

Similarly, the Adelaide Express was renamed The Overland in 1926, despite some reluctance from the South Australian authorities who jointly ran the inter-capital service. Clapp oversaw the reduction in running time for the service from sixteen and a half hours in 1928 to around fourteen hours in 1938 (with the departure time changed from 4:30pm to a much more convenient 7:00pm),

Clapp was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in the 1941 New Year Honours "or public services in the Commonwealth of Australia."

Commonwealth Land Transport Board

In February 1942, Clapp was appointed Director-General of Land Transport by the Curtin Government to co-ordinate Commonwealth and State road and rail transport. In 1944, he was asked to prepare a report on the standardisation of track gauges in Australia.

The Second World War, in generating greatly increased rail traffic through the shipment of men, munitions and supplies around the country, exposed the inefficiency of a national rail system built on several systems built to different gauges. Multiple break-of-gauge points across the country between narrow gauge, standard gauge and broad gauge compromised the ability of the railways to support the war effort and required upwards of 1,600 men at various break-of-gauge points to transfer cargo from one train to another. South Australia objected to the Darwin link being built from Queensland rather than extending the existing Central Australia Railway link from Adelaide to Alice Springs. By 1962, Melbourne was linked to Sydney by a standard gauge link, and by 1970 the standardisation of the transcontinental link from Sydney to Perth was completed.

Another key element of Clapp's 1945 proposal was delivered, at least in part, with the standardisation of the broad gauge Crystal Brook line connecting Adelaide to the transcontinental Sydney–Perth railway in 1982, followed by the standardisation of South Australia's non-metropolitan broad gauge network and most of the broad gauge network in western Victoria in 1995, including the main Melbourne-Adelaide railway.

Retirement and death Locomotive B 60, later named Harold W. Clapp, on its delivery run to Melbourne is passed by one of Clapp's earlier S class streamliners In September 1951 Clapp resigned for health reasons but continued to act as a consultant to the Department of Shipping and Transport. On 14 July 1952 the first of the B class diesel electric locomotives, which were to revolutionise train operations in Victoria, was delivered to the VR and travelled from NSW to Melbourne's Spencer Street station under its own power. The elderly Harold Clapp climbed into the cab of locomotive B 60 and sat at the controls, and was honoured by having the new locomotive named after him.

On 21 October 1952 he died in hospital, leaving behind his wife, two sons and a daughter. Tributes were paid by many, including Prime Minister Robert Menzies. Journalist C. R. Bradish described him as "a remarkable man", with "sufficient power and imagination to give the Victorian Railways a reputation they had never known before".