John Aitken is a familiar and friendly face around Milpeak Pty Ltd. He has spent 35 years in the communications industry as an engineer, rising from a cadetship at Telecom Australia in 1974 to his position now as an expert communications systems consulting engineer. John is an elder statesman in our industry, particularly in the Rail sector where he is currently the Chairperson for the Institution of Railway Signalling Engineers – Australasian Section.

John Aitken & Associates provides Milpeak Pty Ltd with expert engineering expertise, as well as providing additional resources to our internal team. John and his team also act as independent checkers of ours and our vendor’s engineering documentation. In turn, Milpeak Pty Ltd has provided John Aitken & Associates with assistance in tender budget preparations as well as technical services.

The following articles have been written by John and are interesting articles for those who have been involved in the railway communications sector in Australia.

Australia Wide Communications - Excerp: "Australia has a sad history of incompatibility in railway radio communications. There is no standard for radiocommunications on the standard gauge track. Some states have incompatible radio systems on different track gauges; one has incompatible radio systems on the standard gauge track. The situation looks likely to continue for many years, imposing a substantial cost on each rail operator."

From Teletype to Megabyte - Excerp: "In October 1877 Bell published construction details of his telephone invention. A NSW Railway engineer, Mr Cracknell built a copy and transmitted words and music by telephone over the telegraph wire from West Maitland to Sydney in December 1877. It was an era of excitement and delight in engineering. Morse code had become a mature technology, voice systems were spreading and soon de Forest’s vacuum tube triode was to make amplification possible. Transmission systems were no longer limited in distance and the engineers had visions of linking the continent by telegraph and telephone."