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After Forty Years
Locomotive Engineer for North Island enters Private Business

MR. F. J. Mackley's Retirement

We are pleased to place on record, reference to the appointment of Mr. F. J. Mackley, until recently Locomotive Engineer for the North Island Railways, to a position with the Atlantic Union Oil Company.

Mr. Mackley was born at Port Chalmers in 1873, and received his early education at the Port Chalmers District High School, afterwards becoming a student at Canterbury College, Christchurch.

He joined the railway service at Invercargill in 1889, and two years later transferred to the Addington Workshops to complete his apprenticeship, and, at the same time, take advantage of the training offered to young engineers at the School of Engineering at Canterbury College. Here he was under the eye of Professor Robert Julian Scott, who trained many of New Zealand's most prominent engineers.

Later Mr. Mackley began to obtain experience in other parts of the Dominion, and in 1897 he was transferred to Greymouth, where the railways were being extended rapidly. In 1905, Mr. Mackley was moved to Westport and twelve months later he returned to Adding-ton, where the Class “A” and Class “X” compound locomotives, designed by the late Mr. A. L. Beattie, Chief Mechanical Engineer, were then under construction.

After passing through the various grades Mr. Mackley was, in 1913, appointed inspector of Westinghouse brakes for the South Island and a year later received a similar appointment and was attached to the Chief Mechanical Engineer's office for the North Island.

A further appointment and promotion came in 1918 when he was made workshops manager at Napier, and, in 1921, was appointed assistant locomotive engineer for the Welling-ton section. In the same year he became engineer for Westland, with headquarters at Greymouth, but after only a few months there he received further promotion to the position of locomotive engineer at Auckland.

With the reorganisation of the Dominion's railways, Mr. Mackley was appointed locomotive engineer for the North Island (his present position) with headquarters at Auckland.

When the South African War broke out Mr. Mackley left the New Zealand with the Fourth Contingent, and remained with the forces during their stay in the field. On his return to New Zealand he was selected as one of the members of the New Zealand contingent which attended the coronation of the late King Edward in London.

Mr. Mackley has invented several important devices, which have been patented. One of these is a clever method of automatically applying the Westinghouse brakes on trains on which derailments occur. His most important experiments, however, have been concerned with the use of coal gas under pressure, for lighting railway cars.

The experiments have greatly interested the General Manager, Mr. H. H. Sterling, who has had a complete train equipped with this system. This train is undergoing practical services, tests on the Wellington-Lower Hutt services, and has been running for three months.