Waddell’s work set standards for elevated railroad systems and helped develop materials suitable for large span bridges.

[4]: 62  He later attended Trinity College School in Port Hope until turning sixteen,[5][6] when his parents sent him on a ten-month voyage to Hong Kong and Shanghai on the clipper ship N.B.

Waddell then traveled west, obtaining additional degrees from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and spending some time working at the Raymond & Campbell firm in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

In July 1882, he was hired as a foreign advisor by the Meiji government of the Empire of Japan and taught at the Tokyo Imperial University while writing two books.

The firm would later evolve over the decades with various junior partners, including Ira G. Hedrick in 1899, John L. Harrington in 1907, Waddell's own son Needham Everett in 1915, and Shortridge Hardesty in 1927.

[11] Midway through his consulting career, Waddell opened a New York City office, which soon became the firm's headquarters in 1920 amidst the economic boom of the Roaring Twenties.

Patented in 1893, the cost-effective design allowed for cheap and rapid construction, and could easily carry the heavy loads generated by steam locomotive-powered trains.

Replicated throughout the Empire of Japan and the American West and Midwest, this basic design contributed to the rapid expansion of several railway companies during the Second Industrial Revolution.

While the city of Chicago was the first to build a lift bridge of Waddell's design, the second had to wait for his partnership with mechanical engineer John Lyle Harrington, formed in 1907.

Waddell & Harrington designed a vertical lift bridge (since demolished) for the Iowa Central Railway over the Mississippi River at Keithsburg, Illinois, in 1909.