"Railroading at its wildest" was how one railway historian described Ron Fitch's 46 years in Australian railways. In particular he was amazed at the remoteness and distances involved; at a construction engineer living in a tent, cooking his meals over an open fire and subsisting for an entire summer on tinned meat, potatoes and onions, bread and jam; at the chief civil engineer of a major railway carrying his swag from rest house to rest house when on track inspection; at his being obliged to travel further than from London to Rome to the site of a derailment or washaway, and the same distance back again once the damage had been repaired; or at the existence of a railway system with over 3000 kilometres of main line that didn't cross one permanent stream yet was subject to periodic flooding. Yet these are the conditions in which Ron Fitch worked as he rose from construction and maintenance engineer for Western Australian Government Railways to being South Australian Railways Commissioner.
In 'Railroading at its Wildest' the author looks back over those incident-filled years. But the greatest attention is given to the "most disgraceful" aspect of Australian railways - the lack of standardisation, and to its noblest aspect, the special breed who work the various rail authorities. Not only is that special breed of railwaymen recognised internationally, it also runs in families, and the author discusses this with particular reference to himself and his father, Harry, who between them worked for 88 years for the Australian railways.
