W. G. T. Goodman

Sir William George Toop Goodman KBE MICE MIEE MIEAust (14 March 1872 – 4 February 1961), was an engineer and administrator who supervised the installation of New Zealand's first electric tramway and went on to oversee the foundation and growth of the Municipal Tramways Trust in Adelaide, South Australia.

[11] In 1897 he joined the tramway construction branch of the Department of Public Works, New South Wales,[2] and also served as an officer in the Sixth (Volunteer) Infantry Regiment.

After a referendum on 8 February 1902 which decisively opted for a private enterprise, as against a Municipal or Government, takeover and electrification of the lines, a Tramways Purchase Act was passed.

It enabled businessman Francis Hugh Snow to buy out these operators and to convert to electric traction, giving him a time limit of three years.

After Snow failed to raise the required capital an Electric Traction Act of 1904 authorised the Government to make offers to these seven companies for the purchase of their leases and assets, which if rejected would be put in the hands of an arbitrator.

Commonwealth Minister for Works William Gibson appointed three commissioners: Goodman, Edgar Ritchie and EH Graves.

[note 2] The other members of the committee were Charles Miscamble (former Railways Commissioner of Tasmania), John W. Wainwright (Assistant Auditor-General), and Archibald McInnes (secretary of the Boilermakers' Society).

The inquiry was instigated only two weeks after the return to the United States of Railways Commissioner William Webb, who had been eight years in the job.

[2] Radcliffe, John C., 'Goodman, Sir William George Toop (1872–1961)', in Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Serle (eds), Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol.