Resident - 1923
‘William Alfred Webb, Railways Commissioner, Adelaide.
Born May 16, 1878. Entered railroad service in United States on Oct. 15, 1890. He was appointed as railways commissioner in 1922 and in seven years brought the South Australian Railways system back from brink of collapse to becoming the best in Australia.
The state’s railways system, unchanged from the 19th Century, had decayed from lack of being maintained. Its small locomotives and wooden rolling stock, tracks and bridges, were incapable of carrying heavy loads.
Revenue had been hit by mine closures and the cost of World War I.
Webb arrived from the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway with a record of achievements on other rail systems in the USA. His guiding principle was: “The only basis of economy in railway operation is the reduction of train miles by the use of large capacity cars and the largest possible locomotives.”
Webb introduced a rehabilitation plan based on American railroad principles of large, standardised locomotives and steel bodied freight wagons, with automatic couplers to significantly increase productivity. Lightly patronised passenger trains were replaced by self-propelled rail cars, enabling faster, more frequent and more efficient services.
Webb recruited Fred Shea as his chief mechanical engineer and to prepare specifications for this new equipment.
Orders being placed for 1,200 wagons of four types from American Car and Foundry, 12 petrol mechanical railmotor cars from the Service Motors Corporation, Wabash, Indiana, and 30 locomotives based on the American Locomotive Company but built by Armstrong Whitworth & Co. in the United Kingdom.
These were divided into the Mountain, Pacific and Mikado wheel arrangements that became the 500, 600 and 700 class locomotives.
Residents 1923
William Alfred Webb
with his wife, Alice Webb, (née Van Stone)
and their two sons
