page_title: Harold Winthrop Clapp
section_title: Spirit of Progress
hierarchical_section_title: Harold Winthrop Clapp / Victorian Railways career / Spirit of Progress
caption_attribution_description: English: Spirit of Progress headed by S301 Sir Thomas Mitchell near Kilmore, c1938.
context_page_description: Sir Harold Winthrop Clapp KBE was a transport administrator who over the course of thirty years had a profound effect on Australia's railway network. In two decades as its Chairman of Commissioners, he revolutionised Victorian Railways, with unprecedented attention to customer service and innovations such as more powerful locomotives, air-conditioned carriages, and faster services culminating in the introduction of the flagship Spirit of Progress express train. Seconded to the Federal Government in World War II, he played a pivotal role in the manufacture of fighter aircraft in the defence of Australia. As Director-General of Australia's Land Transport Board, he presented a report on railway gauge standardisation that ultimately led to the eventual linking of all Australian mainland capital cities by a uniform rail gauge.
context_section_description: In 1934, Clapp toured Europe and North America to investigate new developments in rail technology such as diesel locomotives. On his return, he began work on his ultimate project, upgrade of the Sydney Limited service into the all-steel, all-air-conditioned, non-stop, high-speed express streamliner, Spirit of Progress.
  Clapp's decision to invest considerable funds into Spirit of Progress was based on entirely pragmatic considerations. In an age before interstate air travel was common, politicians and heads of industry rode between Australia's two largest capital cities and the national capital Canberra by train. The upgrade of the service was then a smart investment in promoting the Victorian Railways brand and its reputation to the nation's most powerful and influential people.
  The train was truly world class, running non-stop along its entire 190.5 mile (306.5 km) length at an average speed of 52 mph (83 km/h) between Albury and Melbourne, a speed comparable to that of the legendary Flying Scotsman service of the London and North Eastern Railway. Harold Clapp's personal involvement in its design and construction was all-encompassing, from the auto-couplers connecting the carriages to the Art Deco interior design.
  Clapp's time at Victorian Railways is often viewed as being the halcyon days for the organisation. However, during Clapp's tenure the VR was already struggling to match new competition from road transport, as well as to remain profitable despite the legacy of a network of short, inefficient branch lines built in the late 19th century for reasons of political expediency rather than economic merit, challenges that were to bedevil Clapp's successors. The VR only turned a profit in two of the nearly twenty years that he was at its helm.
caption: The Spirit of Progress headed by locomotive S301 Sir Thomas Mitchell in 1938
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