He began his engineering career in
Glasgow, before moving to London in 1871, where he trained under
James Abernethy. There, he gained experience on a number of projects, including the
Alexandra dock works at Newport. In 1885, he took the post of assistant to the chief engineer of the
South Devon and Cornwall Railway, where he worked on the construction of
Plymouth railway station and the widening of the
Newton –Torquay railway line. He joined the staff of the
Great Western Railway (GWR) in 1887 but set up his own practice shortly after, working under contract to the GWR on a number of projects, as well as a number of harbour works in
Plymouth and
Torquay. In 1892, he was appointed Chief Engineer to the Great Western Railway, just after the line had completed its conversion from
broad gauge to
standard gauge. He was tasked with replacing a number of
Isembard Kingdom Brunel's large timber
viaducts in Cornwall with new bridges of steel and stone. He was promoted to
lieutenant-colonel of the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps on 1 April 1908 on the date that it transferred from the disbanded Volunteer Force to the newly raised
Territorial Force. on the
Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway, which now straddles the
M25 motorway Among his major works were the construction of
Fishguard Harbour (establishing a
steamboat link with the
Midland Great Western Railway and
Great Southern and Western Railway at ); the construction of the
Badminton railway line in South Wales; and the construction of the
Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway (now known as the
Chiltern Main Line) between and . ==Honours and death==