Engineer rose to head of Railways
Francis Small Railways chief executive b February 26, 1946 d March 5, 2021
Described as ‘‘one of the great railwaymen of his era’’, Francis Small led New Zealand’s railways through some of the most turbulent times in their more than 150-year history.
Alongside his dedication to rail was a life of commitment to community service through Scouts, church and engineering.
The only child of Margery and Don Small, Small grew up in Palmerston North and attended Palmerston North Boys’ High School.
It was in Palmerston North, as a boy in the 1950s, that Small joined the Takaro Scout group as a Cub, beginning his lifelong association with Scouting, including serving as national president from 1997 to 2002. In 1999 he became one of only two New Zealanders to receive the Bronze Wolf award for his contribution to World Scouting.
However, aside from his family, it was in engineering and rail that Small created his most enduring legacies.
After school, he chose to pursue a career in civil engineering, enrolling at Auckland University. At the same time he took on a cadetship with New Zealand Railways, agreeing to a five-year bond.
As it turned out, there was no need for Railways to have bothered with the bond – he served for 36 years. Small led the company through unprecedented change, winning cheers from those who saw the need to modernise and the champions of the pro-market reforms of the 1980s and 90s, but dismaying the thousands who lost their jobs.
That legacy was well in the future when Small started his career in 1964. Railways then was modernising its infrastructure, if not its industrial relations or management style.
For an engineer, the opportunity to work on an array of once-in-a-generation projects was enticing. Over the next couple of decades, Small had the opportunity to be involved in the electrification of parts of the North Island Main Trunk Line, replacement of the Aramoana and Aranui ferries, and redevelopment of railways workshops among other projects.
He completed his PhD in 1972 with a thesis entitled ‘‘Hydroelastic Excitation of Cylinders’’, about the impact of water flow on bridge piles. At his funeral, New Zealand Rail Heritage Trust chairman Murray King said that Small’s research had relevance beyond water and bridges, and the spiral strakes seen around industrial chimneys also came from it.
King also recalled that modern commitments to safety were less intense when Small started his career. Once, while dropping measuring gear into a flooded river from a bridge, the gear became tangled. Staying too long to untangle it, Small and a colleague had to exit quickly as a train approached the bridge. Many years later, as managing director of New Zealand Rail, Small established the first dedicated safety unit – led by the same colleague.
Intelligent, ambitious and unrelenting in his work focus, Small rose to become deputy chief traffic manager by 1982.
He got the job as the organisation was on the precipice of massive change. In the early 1980s, the National government’s transport minister, George Gair, began deregulating the industry by removing the protections rail had enjoyed from trucking. One effect had been that Railways was accused of sometimes treating its customers with indifference.
The Labour government elected in 1984 continued what National had begun. In 1985, Small was made group manager, freight business group, responsible for all the technical, operational and marketing activities for the railways and ferries. He hired an international consultancy to advise on the ferries, which saw the ships painted white, the introduction of the Interislander brand, and new marketing.
The Labour government was planning the corporatisation of Railways and, on October 28, 1990, New Zealand Rail Ltd became a state-owned enterprise, with Small as chief executive. On the same day, Labour lost the general election.
As expected, corporatisation turned out to be a stepping stone to Railways’ sale. It was rebranded as TranzRail and in 1993 was sold to American owners, including Wisconsin Central, which kept Small on as managing director.
In 1996, TranzRail was publicly floated. Former Wisconsin Central and TranzRail chair Ed Burkhardt described Small as the glue that held rail together in New Zealand in the 1990s. ‘‘He gave new meaning to the words ‘character’ and ‘integrity’ and was an example to many. One of the great railwaymen of his era.’’
Small retired in 2000 and was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to transport. He was also a director of Port of Marlborough, Clear Communications and Antarctica New Zealand, chair of Meridian Energy, MetService and the Centre for Advanced Engineering and past national president and Distinguished Fellow of IPENZ, now Engineering New Zealand.
He is survived by Dianne, his wife of 48 years, sons Cameron, Duncan and Warwick, and six grandchildren.
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