Australian Railway History 807, January 2005, p 27

John Knowles comments on this article:

In the last paragraph of this article, John Kerr said that from 1889 until 1990, the head of the QR (Commissioner) was chosen from within the Queensland Public Service.

Apart from two, who were indeed previously public servants, the Commissioners were not previously public servants. And apart from two others who were brought from the United Kingdom in 1889, all were chosen from within the senior management of the QR.

It might be thought that because the QR was owned by the State government, its employees were public servants. But they were not. The staff of the QR were employed under the terms of the Railways Acts and were not Public Servants. In his Annual Reports to parliament, the Public Service Commissioner always made that point and that he had no jurisdiction over railway employees.

Even if this is regarded as a particularly precise point, it is of some note that from 1902 until 1990 every QR Commissioner came from within its own management. Until 1991, the Commissioner was a corporation in whom the government vested the railways, who in person was its Chief Executive. The QR was legally "The Commissioner for Railways".

Two of the Commissioners had been public servants. One was R J Gray, mentioned in the article, previously Under Colonial Secretary in the Public Service, one of the Board of three, later two, Commissioners appointed in 1889. On the adoption of a sole Commissioner in 1895, he returned to the Public Service as Principal Under Secretary, Railways, ie outside the QR but between the Minister and the Commissioner. On the resignation of Mathieson as Commissioner in 1896 (see below), Gray became Commissioner from 1896 until 1902. The second was T M King, Auditor General in the Public Service, appointed Deputy Commissioner in 1907, who, after the death of Commissioner Thallon in office, served as Commissioner for two months in 1911 prior to his retirement.

Nor is it correct to say that from 1889 every Commissioner came from within the Queensland Public Service or even the QR management, for of the Board of three Commissioners appointed in 1889, of whom Gray was one (as above), two were from overseas and other railways. The Chairman, John Mathieson, had been Superintendent of the Line of the Glasgow and South Western Railway. He was sole Commissioner in 1895-96, when he resigned to become Commissioner, Victorian Railways. In 1901, he became the General Manager of the Midland Railway, England. The third, Andrew Johnston, had been a civil engineer on the Great Eastern Railway, England.

The following lists the Commissioners from 1896 to 1991, their previous posts in the QR, and their profession or speciality.

With respect to having the QR ready for the competitive era, the Commissioners always had to administer government policy. Until the 1980s this included protection of the railways from competition and restriction on road transport, as well as a restricted common carrier obligation on the QR.

These photographs were chosen by the editor and the captions were written by him. It should not be assumed from the use of these photographs with the article that Commissioner Herbert had anything to do with the choice of the designs. The classifications given were applied from 1889/90 and did not apply in Commissioner Herbert’s term. The following are corrections to the captions.

Page 29 All four of these engines entered service in 1867; they were the C class.

Page 31 It is correct that the QR did not again build locomotives in its own workshops until the pattern C16 of 1903, but a considerable number of locomotives was built in the colony by private engineering companies in the 1890s.

Page 32 The plate on this engine referring to Fairlie’s Patent was not a nameplate.

Page 33 This class was known in Herbert’s time as American Small Consolidation. No 42 was so numbered from new in 1879, and was not (re)purchased from contractors. It was sent to the Bundaberg Railway in 1882, where it received the local number 1. It was renumbered 118 in the system wide scheme in 1889/90. It was sold to Bingera Mill in 1900, where it worked until 1946. The photograph on p 36 shows it there.

Page 34 Of the 112 B13s, only a minority of 25 received a wide firebox boiler, and the engines with these boilers were all withdrawn early. The majority were fitted with a deep narrow firebox boiler with 140 lbs pressure.

Page 35 The photograph shows that these engines as built had no balance weights in the coupled wheels at all, not even for the revolving masses. The addition of balance weights was to cure their oscillation wherever they ran. On the Main Range bridges, the difficulty with them was mainly one of weight.

Page 37 A10 6 was lent to the QR for the Centenary in 1965. It was donated to the QR later that year, when Gibson and Howes were clear they had no further use for it (the cane lands along the line on which it had worked at Watawa, near Gin Gin, had been transferred to Gin Gin mill after the 1964 season). In this photograph, the engine is hauling a Society special on 1st August 1965. In the photograph on p 38, the engine is hauling some early rolling stock to the Centenary events at Grandchester on the 31st July 1965.

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2 August 2006, amended 19 February 2008