Born August 1937 and passed away September 2023 after a long battle with cancer.
Brian was an Honorary Life Member of the PWI.

Brian Mills biography from the Aberthaw book below :-

The author Born in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan in 1937, I was educated at schools just 300 yards from my wartime home of Queen Street prior to finishing my schooling in July 1953 at Barry Boys’ Grammar School a mile away. In September of that year, at the age of 16, I took up employment as apprentice fitter & turner at Aberthaw Cement works and after only two years, as part of my training, I was allocated to the drawing office for a session normally lasting six months, but my attention to detail was noted and as the Aberthaw and Rhoose works were to undergo massive plant extensions, I was kept on in the drawing office for the remainder of my five-year apprenticeship. In August 1958, having been called up for HM Forces following a deferred term of three years, I reported for Army medical but did not meet the health standards of the Board. The Aberthaw and Bristol Channel Portland Cement Co. then appointed me Junior Draughtsman. That apprenticeship had been accompanied by mandatory nightschool/technical college education between 1953 and 1958, by which time I had obtained an Ordinary National Certificate in mechanical engineering.

I was heavily involved in draughting new works plant, buildings, surveys and maintenance and records for Rhoose and Aberthaw Cement works and the Company’s power station at Rhoose and I became proficient at using a dumpy level and theodolite for site survey work. New horizons were sought by me, however, and in March 1963, following a very heavy snowfall which had crippled a lot of the country for a while, I joined Midland Silicones at Barry as plant draughtsman, and in 1964 was tasked with producing a complete survey of the then 34 acre site, using an optical theodolite. My attention to detail and quality of my drawing work was noted and in August 1965, the Company offered me a transfer to the discipline of industrial process instrumentation control & design. That vocation was to become my main employment for the next 43 years. 

Following that Company’s requirement that I augment my technical qualifications as a part-time student at night-school, by 1967 I was awarded a Higher National Certificate in Mechanical Engineering but a necessary move to Crawley, West Sussex, in February 1971 ensued. There, employed on the staff at Babcock Woodall-Duckham (BW-D), I worked in-house, on industrial instrumentation and control design for various plants on worldwide contracts, including coke ovens, towns gas reforming plant, by-products plant, glass fibre, fertiliser, nuclear, food processing, sugar refining and petrochemical plants.

Whilst there, I became Company consultant on international industrial screwthreads and produced two technical monographs on the subject, with safety as the main theme in the correct assembly of process threaded equipment for the containment of toxic and hazardous fluids under pressure. The British Standards Institution (BSI) became aware of my specialist knowledge and requested that I become co-opted onto a BSI electro-technical panel dealing with pressure gauges, switches and thermometry and I also had an input into ISO standards during my involvement with BSI.

Married at Barry in 1971, I left Crawley in September 1988 after 17½ years with BW-D and I became a contract designer/draughtsman and spent two years at BP Llandarcy for RSD Technology until June 1990, then at BP Baglan Bay, working there until my 56th birthday on 20th August 1993, having moved back to Barry from Crawley with my wife and two daughters in May 1993. A long break followed, but in March 1994 I was working at Barry as contractor with Barry Company, IDEAS, this time at Dow Corning, where I became interfaced with Computer Aided Drafting. That employment lasted until May 2001 to be followed by six months work based at Barry with IDEAS again, this time for Astra-Zeneca, Severnside, until January, 2003, a further six months with RSD at BP Baglan Bay until June 2003 and finally, working with IDEAS again at Barry for Astra-Zeneca until retirement in January 2004.

Through my earlier lifetime, I spent most of my out-ofschool time on Barry Docks absorbing details of all things mechanical and, later, leisure time on railway track and signalling study and spending countless hours in ten Glamorgan signal boxes and so became professionally interested in railway signalling and civil engineering. On applying for membership of The Permanent Way Institution (PWI) in 1965, I was elected Associate Fellow and in 2006, awarded Honorary Life membership, having become Technical Visits Organiser for the South & West Wales section from 1992. I have proof-corrected some of the PWI text books and published short technical articles and visit reports in PWI Journals and other railway-related publications and have also presented slide shows to PWI/Network Rail staff, private societies and Mens’ Forums. Having thus been affiliated to the railway fraternity for 57 years, I have published two technical books, one on Western Region semaphore signalling and, lately, one on the former Barry Railway and its successors. My photograph library includes over 4,300 photorecords of permanent way and signalling, available on Philip Toogood’s TRACKBED.com website. 

With the coming of a heritage railway at Barry Island following 1994, I became a voluntary part-time Permanent Way Adviser/track maintenance person and was co-opted director to the Vale of Glamorgan Railway Company until 2009, followed by the Barry Tourist Railway as Per Way Adviser/Consultant from 2010. Over that period, I had overseen the complete installation of the permanent way for the Heritage Railway project at Barry, been interfaced with Network Rail, the Vale of Glamorgan Council Project Dept, railway contractors, Welsh Water, the South Wales Fire Service and other contractors/suppliers until “hanging up” my PPE finally in February 2018 at the age of 81. During these times, I had produced computer generated maintenance documentation and CAD drawings of much of the as-measured permanent way and properties on Barry’s railway heritage infrastructure. In retirement, since 2004, I continue to serve with the South and West Wales section of the Permanent Way Institution for which, by 2018, I had arranged over 60 PWI technical visits since 1992