Colonial Engineer: John Whitton 1819-1898 & The Building Of Australia's Railways

Lee, Robert

ISBN 10: 0868404683 / ISBN 13: 9780868404684

Editore: UNSW Press, Sydney, 2000, 2001

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28.0 x 21.0cms, 352pp, b/w illusts, fine hardcover & dustwrapper The chapter heading are: the engineer in the 19th century; England 1819-1856; NSW & its railway 1848-1856; Whitton in NSW 1856-1858; achievements & triumphs 1857-1869; Whitton in the 1870s; a career in decline 1879-1890; a family man & his friends; the legacy of a colonial engineer. Codice articolo 129611

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Titolo: Colonial Engineer: John Whitton 1819-1898 & ...

Casa editrice: UNSW Press, Sydney, 2000

Data di pubblicazione: 2001

Legatura: Hardcover

Condizione sovraccoperta: Dust Jacket Included

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Riassunto:

Raised in the milieu of the great English pioneer railway engineers, George and Robert Stephenson, John Whitton conquered the Great Dividing Range in the 1860s, building transmontane lines by hand, laying them with rails of iron and with bridges of stone, before the use of dynamite and in some of the most remote and inhospitable terrain. - This book is the story of John Whitton's life and work. Like many in his profession, his origins were humble. His is a very Victorian story of social and material advancement through talent, will and mastery of production techniques. His achievement was such that, alone among engineers in Australia, he acquired an international reputation for his genius and his extraordinary achievements. - Few engineers have had so enormous or so lasting an impact as John Whitton; in many respects his railways determined patterns of settlement and development in New South Wales. - He was responsible for the building of 2131 miles (3431 km) of railway and in the process traversed terrain about as challenging as any railway engineer ever encountered. His most arduous tasks were undertaken early in his career, when railway technology was far from mature and involved pioneering techniques such as the use of zigzags to ascend mountains. - John Whitton built his railways on limited budgets and sometimes in the face of powerful opposition, which believed that the colony could not afford railways at all.