Keith Fraser
Fraser, Keith (1893-1952)
Keith Fraser was born on 9 January 1893 at Neutral Bay. That was probably a bad year to be born, for it made him old enough to serve in WWI, and young enough to serve in WWII. He did both with distinction and before, between and after those conflicts he had an extraordinary career as a civil engineer with the NSW Railways.
Fraser was probably destined to be an engineer form birth as his native-born father, James Fraser, was a civil engineer with the NSW Railways. Fraser senior had risen to be Engineer-in-Chief for Existing Lines between 1903 and 1914 and was thus responsible for many of the landmark amplification construction still in use today – the 10 tunnels at Zig Zag, the Glenbrook deviation and the South Coast deviations between Waterfall and Otford. Keith Fraser’s mother was Maria Elizabeth, née Firth – the daughter of Thomas Firth who had also been Engineer-in-Chief for Existing Lines – and thus contributed engineering genes to her son.
Keith was educated at Sydney Church of England Grammar School but does not seem to have sought university qualifications in engineering. His path was one of apprenticeship rather than graduation. He began his working life as a cadet draftsman with the NSW Government Railways & Tramways in 1911, when he would have been 18 years old. His career developed in the direction of surveying and until 1920 his formal employment record shows him as a Junior Surveyor and then an Assistant Surveyor. Among presumably many tasks he apparently worked on his father’s Waterfall deviation in a surveying capacity.
Fraser enlisted in the first AIF on 19 December 1915, giving his ‘trade or calling’ as civil engineer, though the railways only recognised him as a junior surveyor. This talking up of one’s role in civil life was not unusual for Great War enlistees. Service in the Australian Imperial Forces for NSW public servants was not a matter of resigning to enlist. Men were given leave, their job was guaranteed on their return and their pay was made up to its existing level by the Railways, if the army pay was lower. Pay would not have been an issue for Fraser as by March 1916 he had applied for, and been granted, a commission. As his educational qualifications on that application, he claimed only a Junior Public School Examination in 1910. There was certainly no Bachelor of Engineering from the University there.
Second Lieutenant Fraser, aged 23 years and three months, embarked from Sydney on 9 April 1916 aboard HMAT Nestor, unsurprisingly attached to the 12th Field Company of Australian Engineers. He had the usual round of illnesses and hospital admissions and on 1 November was promoted to Lieutenant. In January 1917 he was in hospital in Amiens with ‘Influenza (Slight)’. Unfortunately, the papers that survive in the National Archives of Australia are more about hospital admissions, disciplinary matters, appointment to different units and promotions rather that active soldiering so we know little of where Fraser served or fought. The Engineers built trenches and other infrastructure near the front, so were not isolated from the fighting. In any case the rain of artillery shells fell at random well behind the front lines. By February 1919 with the war over, he had marched out of France, was repatriated to Australia and resumed duty with the Railways on 7 July 1919.
At the beginning of the next year, Fraser’s records show him as an Assistant Engineer, based at Head Office in Sydney, and on 13 February 1922 as Resident Engineer for the City Railway. Fraser was 31 years old. Perhaps his surveying skill was what was required on the City Railway. The tunnels and stations were built from many headings as access was available. There exists a diary by an engineer named Mervyn Edwin Davey, which states that much of the work of the engineers was setting out marks for tunnellers, bricklayers, concreters and ultimately platelayers.
- This permanent traverse [on which the City Railway was based] was set out in 1913 and closed mathematically. Owing to the extent of the traverse and the magnitude of the closing error,[1] or possibly to movement of some of the bores, this traverse includes quite considerable errors between some stations. To avoid large miscloses[2]in setting out of the construction work, several of the engineers of the City Railway have run traverses of their own between certain points and reco-ordinated certain of the stations.[3]
Perhaps the engineer who ran his own traverse was surveyor Fraser.
The paper can be viewed in facsimile at this page on this website: Methods of Tunnelling.
The same two Resident Engineers served on the whole City Railway project from 1922 to 1932 – Keith Fraser and Albert Humphries – and they both answered directly to Bradfield. Whatever the qualification process was, The Institution of Engineers Australia accepted Fraser as an associate member, for in 1930 he had a paper published in the Journal on the tunnelling techniques he had used. Humphries also published a paper in the Journal at the same time and the two are foundation documents in any heritage study of the railway.
By 1932 the railway was finished as far as it would be for 24 years, for funding had run out and no further station was opened until 1956. There is perhaps one issue over Keith Fraser’s career and rapid advancement which should be mentioned. His dad, James Fraser, had by this time become Commissioner for Railways so was there a dose of nepotism here? Who knows, but with Fraser junior’s undoubted competence and his rise to Chief Civil Engineer and Commissioner in his own turn, long after his father’s death in 1936, who would argue?
Fraser worked through the Depression years around Sydney, being classified from 1929 as an Engineer Civil Class 1, and then as Resident Engineer, Sydney South, based at Sydenham from 1934, Inspecting Engineer, and Supervising Engineer, Programme Works.
In 1937 a pier of the 1889 Hawkesbury River Railway Bridge cracked and another young engineer, Keith King, was appointed to investigate. By early 1939 the decision had been made to replace the huge bridge. Keith Fraser was made Supervising Engineer (Hawkesbury River Bridge) and later that year Supervising Engineer Construction, and this would have included the new bridge
Soon the Second World War had erupted and Fraser was called to military duty once again. He soon became commanding officer of a railway construction unit. His record card includes a re-imbursement of £6-10-7 for expenses incurred in travelling to Melbourne in connection with the formation of this unit. So perhaps he was the driving force behind the formation of the unit he was to command.
Fraser was appointed Commanding Officer of the Australian Railway Construction and Maintenance Group on 8 April 1940, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and left Australia on 22 May. The unit was meant to go to France to build and maintain railways behind the front, but France had capitulated before Fraser reached Europe and there was no front in France. He reached the United Kingdom in July and spent until January 1941 constructing sidings and other infrastructure before embarking on 3 January 1941, reaching the Middle East on 8 March. The unit built a railway through the desert beside the Suez canal and other tasks but the major project soon became a new military railway from Haifa in Palestine through Beirut to Tripoli in Syria. The Australians, assisted by South Africans, were given a 95-mile length from the outskirts of Beirut to Tripoli. The Allied strategy was to keep Turkey on side and this needed a strong supply route. Syria was Vichy French but had been quickly neutralised by the Australian 7th Division, so the construction path was clear, if rugged.
Fraser completed this railway so well and so quickly – he was given 18 months and took 12 – that he was awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) for it and reading the citation allows better understanding of the description of building the railway.
- Lt-Col. Fraser has commanded Aust. Railway Construction and Maintenance Group since its inception. The Group has been employed constantly since its arrival in the Middle East on constructional work in many theatres of operations. Col. Fraser has been faced with difficult problems in many instances controlling work of his Group in widely separated locations. By his technical ability, combined with outstanding leadership, he organised the necessary investigations, preparations and construction, and carried the works through to a highly successful conclusion.
- During the period under review his unit has been specially employed on the Haifa-Tripoli railway project. Col. Fraser was almost solely responsible for the survey, layout and supervision of construction. His expert knowledge, initiative, resource and drive have succeeded in overcoming the inherent difficulties of the task. His handling of equipment problems, and of labour (native and civilian in addition to his own unit) has been so capably performed that he has succeeded in bringing his section of the work almost to a stage of completion in remarkably short period. He is an officer of outstanding merit, who has carried out his duties at all times with exceptional ability and whose quiet confidence impresses all members of his own and other units
The first point to note in those words is that Fraser was almost solely responsible for the survey and layout of the railway. As Commanding Officer he was of course responsible for everything, but perhaps those words also mean that the Junior Surveyor from 1912 at Waterfall, and the man working in the City Railway tunnels in 1925 to set out the lines for his bricklayers was also specially involved with a theodolite in Syria and Lebanon.
Secondly it is noted that he managed civilian and native labour. It might be thought that this means local men, and while it does – 8,000 of them, it also means local women and children. The photos of the work are from the collection of, if not the camera of, E. R. (Ross) Gordon who served under Fraser both in Syria and later in the Way and Works Branch of the NSW Railways. Gordon, in his captions of these photos writes that these local people were breaking and carrying ballast. Whether ‘native’ labour means local Lebanese, or the South African labour battalion which was heavily involved in the work is not clear. There are certainly many black faces in the photos. These were warriors by nature – Swazis, Bechuanas and Zulus. They had joined the army to fight and did not take kindly to building railways. They liked military drill and marching like soldiers, so at one stage, where the fill of an embankment needed compaction they marched back and forth, satisfying their own needs, and achieving a good measure of compaction.
This was no Pioneer[4] railway across featureless land in western NSW. It clung to cliffs, had tunnels – one more than 4,000 feet or 1.2km long – very high embankments, deep cuttings, very tall retaining walls and large bridges, and it was all finished six months early. For the tunnel, miners were recruited from the gold mines of South Africa. The local limestone was no challenge for men who had worked the deep hard rock of the Rand.
Moving film of the work, especially the tunnelling may be viewed at: https://www.facebook.com/lebanonarchives/videos/haifa-beirut-tripoli-railway-1942did-you-know-that-most-of-the-railways-on-the-l/573903386076072/
Some of the photos are indeed stunning, particularly the picture of an old local stonemason carving a decoration for the top of a bridge pier. It is the ‘rising sun’ badge of the AIF. Since no timber was available for formwork or scaffolding for the tall concrete piers they were built as a stone shell from the inside and then filled with concrete. It was quite a railway to build in just a year.
The Railway was ceremonially opened by British General Alexander and film of the event survives. The officer in the slouch hat escorting Alexander is Keith Fraser. Use this link to view the film of the opening: https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C190145
The detailed history of the construction is available in an article in Engineers Heritage Australia e-Magazine through this link: Beirut to Tripoli Railway
Unfortunately, political troubles in that part of the world mean that the railway no longer operates.
By the time that the railway was finished Australian Divisions were being recalled to Australia for the immediate defence of the country. The Australian Railway Construction & Maintenance Group went on to perform work in New Guinea, but without Fraser. He was demobilised on his return, even though an officer of his ability would seem to have had a role in the army yet. He returned to the NSW Railways as Supervising Engineer, Construction and the guess is that the most pressing job that needed to be done was the new Hawkesbury River Railway Bridge. That crossing was absolutely vital to transport for Australia’s effort in the Pacific War, and the best use of Fraser may have been seen to be the rapid completion of the new bridge. The Chief Civil Engineer, Albert Fewtell, was also absent on military duty. William Beaver, the Acting Chief Civil Engineer, was past retirement age and in fact retired about this time. Arthur Lloyd the Resident Engineer was near the end of his career as well.
Although Fraser’s role as Supervising Engineer, Construction must have included other works, it really meant the Hawkesbury River Bridge as it was the largest project in hand by far. The bridge was completed and opened on 1 July 1946. During the whole period of those spectacular flotations from shoreline construction yard to the mid-river piers, Fraser and Fewtrell, now demobilised as well, were responsible. The most eloquent and abiding testimony to their role is the bronze plaque which still exists at the southern abutment.
This bridge was designed, fabricated and constructed by the Department of Railways, New South Wales
Of course, there were many engineers involved in that effort, but prominent among them was Fraser. Fewtrell is recorded lower on the plaque as Chief Civil Engineer.
Immediately after the completion of the bridge Keith Fraser, along with Keith King, who had been Resident Engineer at the bridge for the last couple of years, were sent to Britain and the USA on a study tour. They were being groomed for greater roles in the NSW Department of Railways. In 1950 Fraser succeeded Fewtrell as Chief Civil Engineer and then on 5 February 1952 became Commissioner for Railways. The picture of him in that role, at the beginning of this biography - obviously carefully posed, tells the unfilled promise of this tenure. The plan on the wall behind is of the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, crisscrossed by passenger railways. A line to Kingsford Smith airport is there, as well as many others including one which today only exists as a surface light rail.
Sadly, Fraser’s time as Commissioner was brief as he died suddenly on 23 August of the same year as his appointment. Keith and Muriel Fraser had only one son, Peter Aird Fraser. Peter also served in WWII, in the RAF Bomber Command, and died over Germany in 1943.
Sources
Railway Employment Record Card, Fraser Keith Aird. Museums of History NRS 12922
Fraser’s military record. National Archives of Australia B883 NX12168
Australian Dictionary of Biography
Diary of Mervyn Edwin Davey. Railway Archives. Australian Railway Historical Society NSW Division. 5 Henderson Road.Alexandria.
Knowles J W. Australian Railway Construction in the Middle East. ARHS Bulletin November 1978
https://arhsnsw.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Knowles-Beirut-to-Tripoli.pdf
A 1951 paper by DH Eakins, re-published in the Royal Engineers Journal in 1952
https://arhsnsw.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Royal-Engineers-Journal-June-1952.pdf
Haifa – Beirut -Tripoli Railway 1942. Lebanon Archives https://www.facebook.com/lebanonarchives/videos/haifa-beirut-tripoli-railway-1942did-you-know-that-most-of-the-railways-on-the-l/573903386076072/
Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour
The Hawkesbury River Railway Bridges. Bill Phippen ARHSnsw 2018
By Muscle of Man and Horse, building the railway under Sydney 1916 – 1932. Bill Phippen ARHSnsw 2018
Photograph Album of E R Gordon, officer in the ARC&MG and Chief Civil Engineer of the NSW Railways. Now held in the Railway Archives. Australian Railway Historical Society NSW Division. 5 Henderson Road.Alexandria.
- ↑ A traverse is made between two already established points, or along a route which brings it back to the point at which it commenced. There will always be, at least in 1930, some error when the traverse reaches the known point because of the accuracy limitations of theodolites and distance measuring bands etc, as well as limitations of human eyes and brains. This ‘closing error’ is shared out mathematically along the whole route.
- ↑ Tunnelling from two shafts to meet at the mid-point, the level and line of the track cannot have a significant step when the drives meet.
- ↑ That is the survey stations, not the railway stations.
- ↑ Pioneer is a term used in NSW to describe lines in remote regions built to low standards to provide a very basic service and open up areas to economic development.
