[3] In 1859 he returned to England, working till 1862 as en assistant engineer for the newly created London, Chatham and Dover Railway company.
[1] On 7 July 1862 he joined the Indian public works department as an assistant engineer, initially on a trial basis, and arriving in India at the end of the year.
[3] He was employed on the Great Deccan Road project for eight years, between 1862 and 1870, achieving a succession of promotions during the period, in March 1869 becoming Second Grade Executive Engineer.
[3] He took an extended break in England between April 1873 and December 1874:[3] it was during the summer of 1874 that he married Marcia Napier Ogilvy at Wandsworth (south London).
[2] Between 1881 and 1884, as Engineer in Chief of the Dacca Mymensingh State Railway, he was in charge of a succession of surveys for the important Narayanganj–Bahadurabad Ghat line which would be completed later in the decade.
For much of the four-year period till March 1888 he was employed with the Tirhoot State Railway, receiving particular commendation from the authorities in connection with the Gunduck Bridge, constructed as part of the new line in 1887.
Closer to home, he provided consultancy services in respect of the Marconi radio masts ("wireless station") erected at Poldhu on the extreme south-west of England.
[2] Through most of his life Horace Bell enjoyed robust good health, but an influenza attack in 1902 mutated into heart disease.