Francis Bell

Who was Francis Bell?

Francis Bell CE MInstCE, was a British railway engineer, who worked extensively in Australia, and was involved in a number of important railway construction projects and bridges.

Bell commenced his engineering career in 1837, building railways in England and Scotland, and also worked under Sir John Macneill MInstCE, on the Southern and Western Railway in Ireland. By 1853 Bell had migrated to Australia, and in January 1954, in Victoria, is the engineer on the £1,000,000 prospectus for the Geelong–Ballarat railway line. He was also listed as the surveyor for the Colonial Insurance Company, and there are a number of tender advertisements, for reinstatement for damaged buildings. In 1855, he presented a well received paper on the merits of iron truss bridges to the Victorian Institute for the Advancement of Science. Other works he designed included 17 miles of the railway from Newcastle to Maitland, New South Wales prior to 1858, the design and construction of the Melbourne and Essendon Railway in 1859, and works for the Yarra Yarra Mining Company, and Sandridge Lagoon, Port Melbourne.

Bell was responsible for a number of fairly similar wrought iron lattice truss road and rail bridges, several of which were fabricated from components supplied by Messrs. Lloyds, Fosters, and Company's Wednesbury, Old Park Ironworks, Staffordshire. The West Maitland Bridge was the sixth bridge this firm exported for Bell, with the others including the Hawthorn Railway Bridge and Hawthorn Road Bridge over the River Yarra, in Melbourne, and the Gundagai, Pitnacree, and Dunmore bridges in New South Wales.