Harold Winthrop Clapp

Friday Facts and Fotos. FFF 51 Friday 14th July ‘23

Harold Winthrop Clapp

A recent reading of Richard Huges’s writings from the Victorian Railways Magazine, gave me a better understanding of what a massive influence Clapp made on Newport workshops. During Clapp’s nineteen years in command of the bluestone edifice in Spencer St, the Victorian Railways won a reputation of ‘Australia’s smartest transport outfit.’

Reading down the list of achievements during his term of office is truly mind-blowing. Clapp introduced the Better Farming Trains, faster schedules, cheap weekend excursions, and employed women by the hundreds. He started a creche at Flinders St, introduced Pure Fruit Juice stalls and Raisin Bread available at stations, and bulk superphosphate trains. He introduced welded rail, and upgraded main line which enabled much faster schedules. His major experience overseas was in the introduction of railway electric traction with General Electric, the Pennsylvania Railway, the Southern Pacific as engineer in charge of electrification in California, then as vice-president of the East St Louis and Suburban system and he took up his commissioner’s role in Victoria right at the start of the electrification of Melbourne’s suburban lines.

Clapp introduced the Newport Workshops apprentice’s college and made huge investments to modernise the workshops. So many of his innovations had huge flow-on effect for various departments at the Workshops. Not the least was the production of bigger and more powerful locomotives such as the X and S classes. And they all had to be painted black because that saved money in producing the paint and time in applying it. He figured that locomotives were machines to make money, and less time would be needed to keep them clean.

Of course, his crowning glory was the design and production of the all-steel air-conditioned Spirit of Progress between Melbourne and Albury introduced in November 1937. The first fully air-conditioned train in the Southern Hemisphere, that is if you disregard the Silver City Comet which started operating out to Broken Hill in NSW just three months before the SoP.! Building this special train and streamlining those four S class pacifics involved just about every department of the workshops. From the foundry, to the machine shop, welders, spring makers, upholsterers, timber workers, painters and even the chrome plating shop. And they had good reason to be proud of the job they did!

At the outbreak of WW11, the Commonwealth government placed Clapp in charge of Australia’s infant aircraft industry. Of course, that fitted very well with a man who knew the men and the capabilities of the Newport workshops. H. W. Clapp was certainly a hero of Victoria’s railway industry.

Boys belonging to the young Australia League climb all over an unidentified S class under construction at Newport. This undated photo was set up by the ‘Argus’ newspaper photographer.