A very well done film about the making of a huge steam locomotive from plain bar steel. It is nothing short of incredible to see how these men work to build a giant machine.
They might not have had hard hats or ear defenders, but how many still had their hearing in their retirement? How many enjoyed a healthy retirement for that matter? Easy to laugh about "elf & softee", until you suffer a life-changing or life-ending injury yourself.
I served my apprenticeship in Crewe works and worked with many of the men who worked on these great steam locomotives, I was a sheet-metalworker and worked in many areas of the Works, it was a fantastic place to work, over 5000 men when I was there , probably only a couple of hundred now, Its very sad when I go back to Crewe and see the state of the town as it is now. Use to b a centre of engineering excellence with Rolls Royce, British Rail and many other large engineering companies, you were proud to be selected to become an apprentice and join these skilled men and learn your skills from them.
Renumbered 46207 she derailed at Weedon Northamptonshire on September 21st 1951. Fifteen people were killed and 35 injured. The cause was a defective front bogie wheel due to an oversight at the maintenance shed which caused a bearing to run hot and fail.
Nothing special there. You don't need CAD/CAM/CNC. Most "complex" shapes in engineering are simple curves (parabolic, hyperbolic, etc.), you can draw/draft them with "french curve" template.
No doubt were films like these important to recruiting new generations of workforce to the greatest industrial society at the time. That engineering, though, is something special.
Give them more credit, it is rediculous to say making a locomotive from plain bar steel, there is practically no bar steel in the construction, casting, forging, machineing, lots of highly skilled jobs. I'll stop there the film it self is magnificent.
Such a brilliant film. I like how it really downplays the noise in general. But especially the noise of those rivet guns. I've used a smaller version a couple of times and my god they're ridiculously loud!. Apparently deafness before 30 years old was not uncommon whilst working in these places. So yea. Some PPE or OSHA I agree with. Nowadays its a bit over the top.
This shows one reason why electric locomotives took over. There was no such thing as a multipurpose steam locomotive. A factory like this had to be capable of making many dozens of different designs, each with its own unique components, each intended for a specific type of work on a specific type of railroad. Today, a handful of electric or diesel-electric designs can do it all.
That might be, but electric and diesel-electric locomotives don't have the appeal steam locomotives do and it is because of the diversity that steam locomotives have will not only allow them to survive, but also teach us the idea that the right tool for the job gets the job not only done, but done well. The best electric or diesel-electric designs because they generally can do it all will do it mediocrely.
+Darren H It's worth noting that modern electric locomotives are capable of ludicrous pulling power AND speed simultaneously. The ACS-64 "Cities Sprinter" that Amtrak uses on the Northeast Regional is capable of ~72,000 pound-feet of starting tractive effort along with a maximum speed of ~125mph. This is a passenger locomotive. If it were re-geared for freight service (not really likely considering electrified freight service isn't a thing in the US) I imagine the tractive effort could be made much higher. I hear something similar is in service in continental Europe. Diesels are also generally capable of both - EMD F series were regularly used in both freight and express passenger service with very minor modifications (mostly just HEP/steam generators and different traction motor gearing). Steam
The LMS Stanier Class 5 4-6-0, affectionately known as the Black 5, was a simple, powerful, mixed traffic locomotive. It was a multipurpose locomotive with its power class labeled 5MT. Unlike the loco in the film, a 7P, this locomotive was all over the LMS railroad and soon the entire UK after British Railways joined the Big Four. Though this was a multipurpose engine, as you get into the higher power classes, engines become difficult to tune for mixed traffic. Bigger engines become more restricted on route availability. Passenger "P" type engines were sorted by how fast they could haul certain amount of coaches. They tended to have larger wheels. Freight "F" type engines were sorted by raw tonnage at a certain speed and tended to have smaller wheels. Its difficult to tune an engine for mixed traffic at the 7 power class but a BR Standard 9F hauled express trains. Not only that, No. 6201 "Princess Elizabeth" worked express freight services under BR. Even now engineers are having trouble making mixed traffic engines at high power. The EMD SD40 is a mixed traffic engine but is mostly seen on freight. You never see an Amtrak Acela hauling freight, and you rarely see a GE Dash-9 hauling passenger trains. Not all applications revolve around the design you use.
On 21 September 1951, locomotive No.46207 Princess Arthur of Connaught was hauling an express passenger train that was derailed at Weedon, Northamptonshire due to a defective front bogie on the locomotive. Fifteen people were killed and 35 were injured. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LMS_Princess_Royal_Class
man and just think how much more quickly we could do it today were we to still build steam locos on a regular basis, though much of the means is not changed only the machines, plasma cutters instead of acceling, computer calculated made parts, and more cranes to help with the lifting and maybe the furnaces heating methods, but other then that the machines are still huge, and the weight heavy, and work dangerous. this is interesting to watch but have to say lol that one blacksmith is huge.
Interesting how much larger American built locomotives' fireboxes are. These Princess Royals were BIG engines for British railways and they had a 45 square foot grate area. The PRR K4s, a similar Pacific class in the US, has a nearly 70 foot grate area for half as many cylinders. a J3a Hudson, a similar vintage to the Princess Royal (1935 for the Princess Royals, 1937 for the J3a) has 81 square feet of grate area. Were these engines just that much smaller because of a difference in loading gauge or was the design just so much better that they could use a smaller firebox to do the same job?
US railroads had more space to build and so a bigger loading guage. Most of the UK railways built in the Victorian era had terminii in already crowded big cities, so land was at a premium. The legacy is still being felt.
No, Oxygen+fuel tourch . Now days people use acetylene or MAAP gas, not sure about back then... And of course its mounted some sweet machine to move it a bout to make the cuts. Now days you can get CNC.
Funny, this exact same movie was uploaded by an other person but that one has an opening tune. Has this been edited out in this version? Study In Steel - 1935 London Midland & Scottish Railway Documentary - WDTVLIVE42
"From plain bar steel"? What made you say that? There are steel plates, steel ingots, steel tubes, pretty much steel anything BUT bars in this video. I'm sure there has been steel bar used in construction of locomotives, it just isn't the major, basic form of material for a steam locomotive. Steel plates and sheets is what comes to mind first.
Look at all these guys working in shirts and vests. Back then, no matter what your job was, it was still important to wear your sunday best when the company film crew came calling just to make sure the watching public didn't get the idea that these were hot, sweaty, smelly, and deafening jobs..
I sure hope the guys at OSHA don't see this. I would hate to think that there would be a case of mass apoplexy! An amazing video, everything from big hammer mills to human counterbalance weights. Those were certainly the good 'ole days.
Wow. Was it seriously necessary to stretch this into a wide aspect ratio? Even if you got it that way you could have fixed it before uploading it. I'm going to watch it, but now I have to download it and fix it first...
Those were the times where engineers were valued for their knowledge and ingenuity and they actually had to have those attributes to be able of calling themselves 'engineers', not like today's software-based wannabes. Place one of our present top mechanical engineers with a task to design just some part of such locomotive without any PC, no software, just a sheet of paper and a pencil like engineers did it in past and I guarantee that he will shit himself.
Fucking OSHA... I was having a good day til I saw that acronym in the opening crawl. Makes my blood boil, just thinking about how much energy I see wasted on job sites over this useless department. "Wear your hard hat!" But I'm a roofer... "Wear your tinted safety glasses!" Ugh, this is New Orleans, by 6:30 they're so fogged over and stained with sweat I can't see shit...
Slide Rulers, a lost art. Sadly, the day of the craftsman is a lost art. No, but seriously the computer has fucked up the creative manufacturing process. Gotta love the guys who don't wear 1 piece of safety equipment.
