Classic Railway Film 7 | A Day tour At Vulcan foundry in 1954

[@brakecompo2005]

Thank you for posting this - a fascinating film. There is no sense in the film that this whole world would soon be swept away by the future. It is very poignant to think that all of these highly skilled people, who were something in their world, would soon have skills that were not valued, which would soon count for nothing. Yes, we have moved on as a society in so many ways, but not always for the better.

[@krisdowie7747]

The streamline diesel coming out of the shed was made for Queensland railways in Australia,10 in all I worked on everyone of them,1200 class

[@bigkiwimike]

Thanks for confirming that. I thought it was a 1200.

[@vickielawless]

Fascinating video of a lost world. In 1954 Vulcan were just about to begin building main line diesels. Now all gone- to be replaced by a housing estate and the inevitable supermarket..

[@thestocktonflyer4059]

Great video 😊 thank you.

[@moley3109]

I just love that "The precision measuring of the rod shows that it's too long" "Right then, I'll whack it with me 16 pound 'ammer, sir!"

[@keithammleter3824]

Yeah, shortening it by bending it. When Ted measured it, he didn't appear to hold the gauge on any feature of note. Ted's just some actor they hired and its all just pretend for the film. Later he uses a micrometer incorrectly, and later still performs a totally meaningless check with a 6-inch rule held at a right angle to a con-rod.

[@BillDavies-ej6ye]

@@keithammleter3824 Yes, looking at the the back of the micrometer! And two additional people to refer to the drawing, think for a bit, and then nod to say, "it's OK." Ted Wilson, the same guy was in multiple shots.

[@vicprice4000]

Great video, enjoyed every second. So sad that industries such as this are long gone. A skilled, proud workforce producing quality machinery and earning valuable foreign currency for Britain. I would imagine that every single component of those locos, from the steel to the gauges, would have been made in Britain. Where have we gone wrong?

[@chrislyon7147]

Complacency, a deeply hierarchical management and an unwillingness to invest in people and research and development. You can hear it all in the phrase 'some distant tropical country'

[@saltspringrailway3683]

Thatcher Only joking. The reasons are varied and complicated. Sticking with steam when other countries were building diesel and electric for one.

[@keithammleter3824]

Where you went wrong is that in fact British quality was kept at the pre-war standard, and-post war every other industrial country used their war-time experience to improve quality. Also, Britain in the 1950's and 1960's was wracked with strikes, making delivery schedules unreliable. A third factor was the rise of the professional generic manager in very senior positions, displacing the earlier generation that were keen on and proud of what their firm made. World War 2 left Britain bankrupt, and that didn't help things either. No money to invest sufficiently, no money to do things right.

[@logotrikes]

Communist shop stewards, inept management, little R&D, an inability or reluctance to see what was coming from the East. That just about sums up Britain's demise. No chance of recovery either sadly. We had it all and pissed it all away....

[@MalcolmKirk-j4l]

Wonderful. OK, it’s all a staged, but what a reflection on what we have lost. I served my apprenticeship in heavy engineering in the mid 70’s - not much had changed then from the mid 50’s. So many wonderful memories came back watching this.

[@philatherton4242]

Grandad worked there in the Boiler shop as a riveter

[@fredbeverton553]

Glad we have proper ppe now

[@keytesofessex]

At least one of these guys featured in the famous “ night mail” film

[@cricciethcastle5077]

Wonderful film. Incredible skill, experience and "know-how". The private builders in GB at that time were building locos which were often far larger and more complex than the locos built by the Big 4 companies for domestic use. Just look at the size of that boiler! The firebox is so large it has to have "hinged" stays in the "breaking zones". No safety gear anywhere. The noise is so phenomenal they must all have been deaf.

[@johnrobertson2749]

Yes, hearing protection didn't exist for workers...it is good to have regulations about that sort of thing these days!

[@gordonjustin4787]

It was precision work. It is an Excellent Video ! Thank You.

[@christopherpearson4489]

from a time when the word GREAT was infront of britain

[@sigurdjohnson6617]

Excellent video.

[@CaptainK007]

An absolute measurement of skill was the ability to smoke a pipe, measure the work and look at a drawing all at once. Using a slide rule came a close second. When we are totally automated how are we to put a roof over our heads and food on the table.

[@admiralcraddock464]

7.30 "....in his day the shop was half its pressent size." Fast forward fifty years and its now a housing estate. Just about sums up the attitude to manufacturing in this country.

[@astridvallati4762]

QGR's first Pacifics, the B18-1/4 class, were built by Vulcan. Their successors, the BB18-1/4 were built by Walkers (Queensland) on the Improvements developed by Vulcan. They were the last class of QGR locos Built in Qld, and Two are still in Heritage Service ( 1079 and 1089).

[@davidpunchard1976]

Not an item of PPE (personal protective equipment) to be seen. How times have changed, for the good.

[@ianomeara6263]

How hard the men worked and what little thanks they got at the end of their working life 😂

[@daystatesniper01]

Superb video ,sadly now but a distant memory , love the total lack of H&S no goggles,ear defenders etc'

[@tangerinedream7211]

We are in the 5hit as we no longer have any manufacturing industry.

[@tommyasquith]

The difference in OH&S standards between then and now is profound, eg the close proximity when pouring molten metal without eye protection. How many eye injuries before the penny dropped.

[@janecapon2337]

You cannot beat British steel

[@martinusher1]

Just think - a mere 10 years or so later all this will be gone (along with the jobs and skills) as if it had never existed.

[@harri2626]

Sad to realise that those Indian students were studying a soon to become obsolete technology in India, when their railways went to the USA for Alco and GM diesel technology.

[@BillDavies-ej6ye]

There a mighty lot of British locos still running in India, and lots of British machines repairing them.

[@harri2626]

@@BillDavies-ej6ye Of course there are old examples still running, but when India wanted to modernise and phase out steam in the late 1950s, they had to go to the USA for diesel technology because UK was so out-of-date.

[@BillDavies-ej6ye]

@@harri2626 It's a slow process, but Britain is phasing out diesel locomotives, replacing them with electric. In the 1950s, Britain was only just beginning to use diesel locomotives itself. We make some electric shunting engines, but our mainline trains are made by French, German and Japanese firms.

[@KevinRudd-w8s]

Ah, those were the days, smoking in the workplace and not a single piece of PPE in sight! I had to do some work in that factory just before it closed, there was very little left by then and locomotive production had long since ceased. Like so many once great engineering and manufacturing works the site has now been turned into a housing estate. I personally think that Britain made a very, very big mistake in turning its back on engineering and manufacturing and by doing so this country will ultimately become nothing more than a third tier country, reliant on the rest of the world for everything.

[@timwhite8500]

It’s no different in any other Western style country. We are all transitioning to service economies. For better or worse it doesn’t matter. It is what it is.

[@keithammleter3824]

Ted is some actor they hired - at 13:54 while the narrator talks about highest standards of accuracy, Ted is seen using a micrometer incorrectly - wound in on the barrel and not the clutch. A real engineer would not do that, even if it was just a pose for the film. At 17:18 he holds a 6-sinch rule on the connecting rod - can only be some nonsense the film director wanted - its not measuring anything meaningful. And he did a supposedly precision check holding a gauge to unfeatured parts of a rod, which was red hot from a blacksmith's forge. Seems the really experienced Ted doesn't know steel expands quite a bit when it is red hot.

[@logotrikes]

All gone now. Very little engineering left now in Britain, just a service nation, washing each other's laundry. In other words not producing anything of value...

[@richardjones7539]

bet he went deaf

[@martinvandermerwe484]

Not one person wearing hearing protection!!

[@martinvandermerwe484]

What a pathetic story line! A quick glance here, a quick chat there, not once is there any serious work done.

[@arlosurgenor6588]

How did we go from there to the pityful mess we are in now? Unbelieveable.

[@neiloflongbeck5705]

The first 4 reasons are: 1. We wanted things to be cheap. 2. We wanted a better standard of living. 3. We failed to innovate. 4. We failed to invest.

[@philatherton4242]

We also turned ourselves into a so called "service economy" Not doing to well to put it mildly!​@@neiloflongbeck5705