My name is Martin Scholes. I like writing reviews on Ciao. I am married, we have a cockatiel and a c...
My name is Martin Scholes. I like writing reviews on Ciao. I am married, we have a cockatiel and a cat. And a growing African Grey. Who orders the cat around!
Member since:06.12.2003
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Fred Dibnah's Age of Steam DVD is another exceptionally good TV programme released on DVD that carefully reflects and capture's Fred Dibnah's love of steam and his respect for the engineers who made steam not only a possibility but a living and breathing reality before, during and beyond the Victorian era.
As anyone who knows of Fred Dibnah will be able to testify, Fred Dibnah has had a special fascination for all things steam since his childhood growing up in the Northern industrial town of Bolton, Lancashire. In Bolton if cotton was King, the steam must assuredly have been his Queen or consort.
Fred's respect was made manifest by the fact that he carefully and expertly restored steam engines not only for himself (his Aveling and Porter traction engine for one) but also for friends and later for commercial clients.
Although he did some of the work on site, he preferred to do it in his back garden workshop which was filled with many special tools,
often of his own design and manufacture, all powered by a small steam engine that he operated in his back garden workshop.
Section 1 of this DVD is entitled The Early Pioneers. Fred talks of the earliest forms of power, water and wind, and then points out that steam power began to take over as the main power source in the 18th and 19th century, bringing the possibility of mechanisation and industrialisation, mass production and rapid transportation. All due to coal and its use to fire steam boilers.
Fred points out that there's a special smell to the production of steam power, and that older people who visited his workshop said that the smell of oil and steam took them back to the days of their youth, when virtually everything was powered by steam boilers run on coal.
The earliest use of steam power was for draining mines. These simple Newcomen engines were replaced by better and better steam engines, which, as they became smaller, were able to be used for a wider and wider range of tasks. Railway locomotives, to operate ship's paddlewheels and later propellers, to operate farm equipment, mills, and so on. Not forgetting that steam power still provides the vast majority of the electricity used in Britain to this very day. (Gas and nuclear power stations are exactly the same as old coal fired power stations, it is just that they use gas or radioactive fuel to boil the water to run the steam turbines.)
Fred explains the basic principles of how steam is produced and how it can be used to provide energy for any industrial process.
He looks at all types of steam engines and all types of use that steam was put to. Transportation, the many and very varied uses that steam power was put to in the industrial age that made Britain the powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution and beyond.
Of course, there are references to the traction steam engines that Fred owned and worked on, how steam engines revolutionised everything from cotton to road transport, from energy production to coal mining, from rail transport to International transport and beyond.
Fred points out the great and farsighted pioneering work by Trevithick at the wonderfully named Ding Dong Mine in Cornwall, where he had pioneered the use of many technical innovations such as chimneys to create a better draft, and the like. Fred also shows how the pioneers were interconnected by either working with each other, or with people who had worked with them previously
There are six programmes on this excellent DVD: Programme 1: The Early Pioneers Programme 2: The Transport Revolution Programme 3: Driving the Wheels of Industry Programme 4: Steaming Down the Road Programme 5: Steam on the Water Programme 6: Steam in the Modern Age
The superbly executed draughtsman's drawings that illustrate the programmes throughout were all drawn by Fred Dibnah himself.
If you like Fred Dibnah, you will want to buy this DVD. If you have an interest in engineering (historical or modern) industrial history or industrial archaeology, or in social history, or transport, then you will also want to buy this DVD.
It is produced by The View From the North and is released by the Contender Entertainment Group and was originally broadcast by the BBC. It is certificate E and should be available at any shop that sells DVDs or via Amazon, where it should cost £12.97, new.
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Great review - I was lucky enough to meet the great man briefly in a hotel in Newcastle a few years ago - a real gent and sadly missed - what a passion he has for waht he did I only wish I was as happy in my job ;-)
lazza123 24.07.2006 18:02
Great review, my kind of thing. and Fred is sadly missed. Larry
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