William McCullough
McCULLOUGH, William Alexander, BE ME FIEAust FICE (1895–1976)
Born in Auckland in New Zealand, but educated in Perth, McCullough joined the Public Works Department as a cadet in 1913. He studied engineering at the University of Western Australia, from which he graduated BE in 1917.
McCullough served as a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in Italy and in France in 1917-18, and was mentioned in dispatches. On return to Western Australia, he worked as a field assistant on railway location and construction in the Public Works Department as an Assistant Engineer, and in 1925 he became a Resident Engineer. He transferred to the Railways Department in 1931, where he became Chief Draughtsman in 1933 and Assistant Chief Civil Engineer in 1935. He introduced bituminised water catchments and long welded rail techniques, and participated in the national investigation into railway standardisation. McCullough became Chief Engineer of the Railways Department in 1949, and he retired in 1955.
McCullough was the Chairman of the Perth Division of the Institution of Engineers Australia in 1939. He was a part time lecturer in railway engineering at the University of Western Australia between 1933 and 1942.
McCullough’s published papers include ‘Railway Development in Western Australia’, JIEA 12, 1940, p240, and his thesis, presented for the degree of Master of Engineering in 1936, entitled ‘Passage through the Darling Range’.
References:
PSL 1930;
‘RRC … railway development … Walter Watts’, V&P WA 1942 3, A1;
WWA 1950, p450;
M T Morley, personal communication to D Cumming, 1989.
