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Engineering (I)
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★ Engineering (I)

The very last steam loco was withdrawn from British Rail service in 1968.  ibid.

 

Locomotive engineering reached its peak between the 1930s and the 1950s.  It was the time when the great passenger express locos were built.  ibid.

 

By this time the first steam powered locos designed to run on metal tracks appeared on the scene.  And the pioneer as with so many things associated with steam was the great Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick.  ibid.

 

Stephenson wasn’t the inventor of the locomotive, but he played a leading part in turning it into a practical means of hauling coal and transporting passengers over long distances.  It was the beginning of the railways as we know them.  ibid.

 

Originally there were nine of these winding-engine houses, and this is the only one left.  And it actually still works.  (Railways & Steam & Train & Engine & England & Great Britain & Industrial Revolution)  ibid.

 

As the railway network spread across the country it was the locomotive that won the day.  ibid.

 

The development of the railways wasn’t straightforward, especially when the great engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel was involved.  While Britain’s network had developed with a four-foot-eight-and-a half-inch gauge, Brunel’s Great Western Railway was built with a completely different seven-foot-and-a-quarter-inch gauge ... They did away with Mr Brunel’s extra line on the outside.  A shame really.  ibid.

 

In spite of losing the battle of the gauges, Great Western Railway went from strength to strength.  And in 1902 they appointed George Jackson Churchward as their locative superintendent, and he produced a range of designs that were far ahead of their time and very successful.  ibid.

   

Between 1804 and 1971 Britain built an incredible one hundred and ten thousand steam locomotives.  ibid.

 

 

For nearly two hundred years steam drove the wheels of industry and made Britain into the greatest industrial nation in the world.  Fred Dibnahs Age of Steam e3: Driving the Wheels of Industry

 

These things are called looms for spinning cloth with.  The noise levels are terrific.  Can you imagine what it must have been like in a room with fifteen hundred of these things all going at the same time for sixteen hours a day?  (Steam & Engineering & England & Great Britain & Industrial Revolution)  ibid.

 

A Boulton & Watt beam-engine – all of twenty horse-power.  ibid.

 

By the middle of the nineteenth century a steam-engine had been harnessed to every industry that was around ... And it had a massive effect on the lives of working people.  ibid.

 

This is what’s known as a Cornish boiler – reputedly invented by Richard Trevithick in Cornwall.  (Steam & Engineering & England & Great Britain & Industrial Revolution)  ibid.

 

People don’t realise really the power of steam ... It’s like a potential bomb in a way.  ibid.

 

By the middle of the nineteenth century Boulton & Watt’s rotating beam-engine began to give way to this thing – the horizontal steam-engine.  ibid.

 

It was a very efficient way of driving machinery.  ibid.

 

The industrialisation of the great cities put a terrible strain on the antiquated water and sewage systems ... Many new pumping stations had to be built.  ibid.

 

 

By the 1940s steam vehicles were heading for the scrap-yards in their thousands.  Fred Dibnahs Age of Steam e4: Steaming Down the Road

 

About thirty-odd years ago I bought a steamroller.  And I think I were ripped off – I paid a £175 for it.  ibid.

 

This is a replica of a road steam carriage that was built by the Cornish engineer and inventor Richard Trevithick in 1803.  ibid. 

 

This nice brass tap here is a very important bit – you get your water for your tea out of it.  ibid.

 

They also needed engines to get round the farm under their own steam.  ibid.

 

All traction engines and steamrollers have a design fault: there’s no breaks.  ibid.

 

It soon found its way on to the fairground.  ibid.

 

There’s nearly four thousand steam-driven road vehicles in England.  ibid.

 

 

Then steam power was introduced to the oceans to make sea travel between the continents faster.  Fred Dibnah’s Age of Steam e5: Steam on the Water

 

The triple expansion engine turns a screw propeller, and it’s this that powers the ship through the water.  And very nice it is too.  But the first steam-powered ships were propelled by paddle wheels like this.  ibid. 

 

It was one of my heroes Isambard Kingdom Brunel who made the breakthrough.  The SS Great Britain was built by Brunel.  It was one of the outstanding engineering achievements of the Victorian age.  ibid.

 

Brunel went on to build a bigger ship – the Great Eastern.  ibid.

 

By the end of the nineteenth century the steam engine was being put to a wide range of uses.  ibid.

 

‘I name this ship Britannia’ ... Three steam turbines that generate all the electricity for the ship.  ibid.

 

 

The steam turbine was invented by Charles Parsons.  Fred Dibnah’s Age of Steam e6: Steam and the Modern Age

 

But electricity didn’t make steam redundant.  The thing that made possible the mass supply of electricity was steam.  ibid.

 

Mallard was one of the many A-4 class steam locomotives built by [Nigel] Gresley for the London and North East Railway.  ibid.

 

There are more than fifty steam railways around the country all run by enthusiasts.  ibid.

 

Steam power was developed here in Britain, and it’s one of our unique contributions to history.  ibid.

 

 

This is my garden and of course over the last forty years I’ve amassed a grand array of antique machinery and shed … But now I’ve got an even bigger project on the go  it is really a bit unusual to have a pit-head-gear in your back garden … I’ve got a grand plan … to build a replica coal mine in my garden … My idea is to build a working replica of a mine to show just what it were like.  This programme really is about steam, coal and our industrial heritage, and my attempts to preserve some of it here in my back garden.  Fred Dibnah, Dig With Fred, BBC 2004

 

It were steam that drove the coal industry.  ibid.  

 

Every mine needs to have three things: 1) a mine shaft which of course is a big hole in the ground that goes all the way down to where the coal is buried; 2) the winding engine which really is a winch which lowers the men down to the coal and winds up the spoils of the digging operation; 3) the pit-head gear.  ibid. 

 

So, you lay the bricks on the iron ring a few feet at a time which provides a sort of foundation, and you brick up the gap to the underside of the brickwork where you last left off.  ibid. 

 

We’ve got to build a railway from the top of the shaft.  ibid. 

 

It’s time we set up the health and safety aspect of it.  ibid. 

 

Trouble.  Big problems … Another visit from the Council.  ibid. 

 

 

Having served his [TV] screen apprenticeship he went on from being documentary subject to documentary presenter.  Fred Dibnah: A Tribute to Fred, BBC 2004

 

Fred served his apprenticeship as a joiner but all the time despite parental disapproval he pursued his goal of becoming a steeplejack.  ibid.  

 

‘I have neglected my business, everything really, for the sake of this ten ton of iron.’  ibid.  Fred

 

‘Traction engines are good things; they don’t answer back.’  ibid.  Fred to old ladies

 

‘He was a great television presenter.’  ibid.  Paul Daniels

 

But there was always a sense of sadness, a great sense of loss for the sights and sounds of industries that have long disappeared.  ibid.

 

As a young man Fred went to art school.  ibid.

 

Fred’s cancer was first diagnosed in 2001.  ibid.  

  

 

This series follows Fred Dibnah on the journey he made across Britain on his traction engine ... And it was to be his last ... This series is a record of Fred achieving his last great ambition.  Fred Dibnahs Made in Britain e1: The Passion of a Lifetime, BBC 2004 

 

Fred’s engine is a 1912 Aveling and Porter convertible tractor.  ibid.

 

Getting around the country under the power of steam wasn’t easy.  An engine like this wasn’t really designed to be driven in modern traffic.  ibid.  Fred

 

It were illegal to put your sucker pipe into the horse trough.  ibid.

 

So they’re ready for the road, and Alf can’t wait to get started: ‘Oh aye, I’m on this holiday with him.  Aye, he’s invited me to come with him.  It’ll be a once in the lifetime opportunity.  I’m really looking to that.  I’m the steersman.’  ibid.  Alf  

 

 

The first thing we need is plenty of coal.  We’re off to the coal mine.  Fred Dibnahs Made in Britain e2: Collecting the Coal 

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