Frederick Lewis Dibblee

Frederick Lewis Dibblee (1837-1888) was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. He was trained as a railway engineer in Canada, worked in Brazil and Prussia, and then spent the rest of his working life in India and Burma, dying of a fever in Calcutta.

Railway Achievements in India

• 1864 Nov; First arrival in Madras, as Engineer-in-Charge on the Great Southern of India Railway. In India he found his proper sphere, and the remainder of his career was passed in that country, in active and continuous employment, mostly on railway work. After being District Engineer on the Great Southern of India for a year and a half, he became Chief Engineer, a position he continued to hold until August 1868, when he retired.
• 1868 Aug; Chief Engineer of the Carnatic Railway, also in the Madras Presidency. In 1873 he returned to England on leave
• 1874 Mar; He entered the Public Works Department of India, as Executive Engineer, Ghotki Division, Indus Valley State Railway.
• Among other work, he was engaged on the then Punjab Northern, the Southern Mahratta, the Cuddapah, Nellore and Orissa Railway surveys; and in Burma on the Tounghoo-Mandalay Railway.

He died at Calcutta on the 28th of September, 1888, having just been posted to join Mr. Horace Bell's staff for the Desert Railway survey in Rajpootana.

Mr. Dibblee acquired a reputation in the Punjab for his bold and skilful construction of temporary timber stagings, made from railway sleepers, for the erection of iron bridges. These stagings were devised so that the progress of the work should not be interrupted by freshets or floods in the nullah-bed, as was the case with ordinary stagings. He was elected an Associate of the Institution on the 6th of December, 1864, and was transferred to Member on the 23rd of February, 1869.