Frederick Mills (engineer) - Biography

Biography

Frederick Mills was born in England in 1898. He served for six years as an apprentice fitter-and-turner with R & W Hawthorn Leslie and Co. at Newcastle upon Tyne and after passing the necessary examination was admitted to that company's drawing office during his apprenticeship. He served in the Royal Air Force and on de-mobilisation became a draughtsman with Sir W.G. Armstrong-Whitworth & Co., another well-known builder. While working for his two British employers, Mills participated in the design of locomotives for export to railways throughout the world. In 1926, on the recommendation of Sir W.G. Armstrong-Whitworth & Co., he was appointed Designing Draughtsman for the WAGR and emigrated to WA. He was promoted to Chief Draughtsman in 1931.

During 1928 Mills was handed the responsibility for designing the only Garratt built in Australia up to the Second World War - the Msa Class. The design was similar to the Ms Class supplied by Beyer-Peacock & Co. Ltd., but the lengthening of the firebox required work to be done on the re-distribution of weight and the pivots.

During the 1930s, Mills submitted plans for a new 4-8-2 locomotive class to assist in Western Australia's failing railway system. They would become the WAGR S Class, the only locomotive to be completely conceived, designed and built in the Midland Workshops. Despite his insistence that their construction constituted essential war work, production of the S Class was postponed, and it wasn’t until 1943 that the first three of an eventual total of ten were placed into service. The S class was to prove one of the more controversial of Western Australia's locomotives; suffering from a variety of early problems due to Mills’ implementation of some bold new ideas. However, despite numerous complaints from various railway unions they eventually became solid performers.

Mills was just as well-educated in engineering theory as railway locomotive design practice. In 1939 he relieved the Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Western Australia. He was a Member of the Institution of Engineers Australia, The North East Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders, The American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Locomotive Engineers. As a graduate of the second of those worthy bodies, Mills won special prizes for his papers on locomotive boilers and steam locomotive design and construction. He published in the engineering press several articles on locomotive and rollingstock design and read papers before the Institution of Engineers.

Also in 1939, the James F. Lincoln Arc Welding Foundation of the U.S.A. conducted a worldwide competition for papers on new applications of electric welding. Mills took the £1000 first prize in the Railway Locomotive section for his design of a welded engine frame. In 1940 he was appointed Chief Mechanical Engineer.

During the Second World War the WAGR, like other Australian railway systems, was facing severe economic crisis. The problems in Western Australia, however, were exaggerated by a succession of State Governments having provided little for the railways, meaning that they had not yet recovered from the effects of the Great Depression. Approximately half of the WAGR's locomotive fleet dated back before the turn of the century, and by 1943 a quarter were out of service pending overhaul.