The Road to Steel City Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain

Fred Dibnah's grand tour of Britain's industrial past

has brought him to the heart of the Pennines in Yorkshire.

For his steersman, Alf Molyneux, the day starts with the two hour routine of getting steam up.

Right, the ash box is empty now, Fred.

Is there much more in?

You can tell how they ended up all filthy, can't you?

An inch of muck stuck to them, like.

Yeah, it'll not be like that in half an hour.

-Eh?

-It won't be like that in another half hour.

Will you give us a lift, Fred, with these ashes?

Yeah, all right...

Has it been dead long?

Then there's the tarpaulin that covers the engine at night to pack away.

Right, we can start polishing now, can't we?

Aye, well, not polishing, rubbing the dust off.

This'll get the dust off, then we'll go over it again and shine it.

Fred, ever the perfectionist, insists that the engine is always gleaming.

It works. look how it's bringing that horrible...

It must be for fish and chip shop proprietors.

Yeah, look at that.

I'm nearly through the bloody pipes!

Where are we going next?

Well, we're heading for Sheffield,

to go to a forge and see how they used to do it, you know?

-Oh, right.

-And how they made steel when they first invented it.

And how far is it?

-It'll be nice, that.

-How far is it?

I don't know, we'll just keep going till we get there.

It's not very far, I don't think.

Iron and steel form the vast majority of Fred's engine.

When it was built, iron was relatively easy to work,

and could be cast into intricate shapes like the cylinder block and front forks, but it's weak.

Steel is much stronger, but more difficult to make.

It's used in the plate work of the boiler and the moving parts like the axles and gears.

Doing well this morning!

But first, Fred's got an ambition to achieve.

Just down the road,

there's a rather spectacular bridge that goes over the M62.

And every time I go up the M62,

I get this urge to cross it with the traction engine.

But thirsty as ever, they couldn't pass a pub without stopping.

Whoa!

TOOT-TOOT!

TOOT-TOOT!

-The bridge.

-Is that the bridge? It looks high up, this bridge.

Yeah, it is high up, mate, I'll tell you.

Scammonden Bridge is the biggest single-span bridge in Europe.

And it crosses the M62 - the highest motorway in Britain - in spectacular style.

It's got a bit of a dip in it, hasn't it?

They look like Dinky cars, look at them down there.

It's a long way down.

You're not so bad. I've 18 inch further to fall than you.

Can we stop a minute here?

TOOT-TOOT!

-Belting views of the countryside.

-Yeah.

It's rather exciting up here.

When you're down there,

you don't quite realise where you are in relation to this bridge.

You can see the road to Halifax over there, you know, and the reservoir,

which you see all that when you're coming down the hill onto the other side,

then it disappears. And then from here we can see all of it.

Concrete bends, you know!

Every time I've come along the M62 and seen this bridge,

it's always fascinated me.

I've often thought, "I wonder if it'll hold a traction engine's weight?"

It's so high up, you don't realise how big it is.

If you're in any doubt about it holding weight, we'd best bloody get going!

No, no, no, you're all right.

I've seen a few six-leggers full of rock going across, so we're all right.

The... When you think, they must've shifted a few thousand tonne of rock to make this M62 just here.

Shall we get going before the cracks start appearing?

If the cracks appeared, there'd be nowt for us!

We could fall on the motorway and get run over!

It'd go down with a thunderous roar.

Aye, a thunderous roar and that's only us screaming!

Blow your whistle.

TOOT-TOOT!

WHISTLE SPLUTTERS

And now it's full steam ahead for Sheffield.

There's a lot of steel in an engine like mine.

And so therefore, we're heading for Sheffield to have a look round there.

And of course, Sheffield is known all over the world as the city of steel.

Taking in so much scenery in one afternoon is thirsty work.

But at last they find a pub that's open.

Are we sitting here?

I'm getting too old for these sort of trestles.

I'm glad, I'm glad for a sit down.

We're all right. I'm enjoying this trip, really.

It's very tiring, but it's good fun.

Easier than working, but in some ways harder.

I'll tell you what though, all these, er,

you know these beautiful things we've been and...

-Places.

-..you know, these nice places we've seen and that.

If I was asked what was outstanding,

I'd say the warmth radiating from the people we've met.

-Aye, it's nice that.

-You know, kids at school railings waving,

and people coming up every time we stop to put coal on.

You know, we've been made welcome everywhere, haven't we?

That, that really, that's the highlight for me.

Yeah, yeah, mmm, mmm, yeah.

ENGINE CLANKS NOISILY

But some of these hills can still be a bit of a problem for the engine.

They really slow things down.

Ready when you are.

And Sheffield is very hilly.

To make matters worse, it's started to rain.

And Fred and Alf are running late for a meeting.

-We'd better get the map out.

-Let's have a look at the map.

It's other way.

Well, I think it's down there.

-Down there?

-Yeah.

-Well, we might be running out of the rain that way with a bit of luck.

Apart from owt else it looks like it's brighter that way.

Get out this bloody rain!

And it's downhill as well! Right, fold the map up.

Bloody map's wet through and it won't fold up!

They're looking for a World War II tank

in a district of Sheffield called Tankersley.

At the tank, they've arranged to meet someone

to help them find their way.

It's crudely made, isn't it?

No rivets.

By 1940, they'd done away with rivets.

Bet there was a bumpy ride on that.

Good morning. Hello!

Peter Machan is a local historian.

His father worked in the steel industry.

-No, no. He were a traction engine man who invented tanks you know?

-Was he?

Yeah, there were hundreds made by Rushton and Hornsby.

Not them, you know, I can't... I'm going a bit senile.

You know, I can't put my name on it, but very famous,

you know, traction engine company made the first tanks for the '14 war.

You know, millions of rivets and all.

Not one rivet on this, is there?

More like the crudest of welding.

Well, this is a Churchill Tank, these were made in 1940 here.

-Quite modern.

-Aye, they were, and these were the workhorses of the Royal Engineers, you know?

They made 1,100 of these in just a few months here at Newton Chambers.

The big ironworks, all round here, you know?

We'll let you be our guide.

You can ride in our luxury, mechanical transport.

Excellent, it'll be a thrill.

Well, we'll go down to Wincobank Hill

-where we can look down over the Don Valley.

-Yeah.

It's not losing any steam, you know?

Good, good. That's what we want.

All right, underneath the railway bridge there, Fred.

The tank factory has long since gone,

along with much of Sheffield's steel industry.

Get away from...

from t'trees...

This the steepest one?

Oh, no, there's much steeper than this.

That's a long drag that up there, you know, uses a lot of water.

Right, left at the lights, Fred.

-Eh?

-Left at the lights.

'We're going up Wincobank Hill with Peter Machan

to get a bird's-eye view of Sheffield.

'And from this vantage point,

'you can really see how the steel industry took off here in Sheffield.'

Unfortunately, progress is slow.

What the plan didn't take into account

is the traction engine's ability to climb hills.

It's stopped raining now.

-The view's going to be all right.

-Eh?

-The view's going to be all right, it's clear enough.

-Aye.

Magic that, absolute magic.

You got up there well, Fred!

We've been calling it for a month, haven't we?

It wouldn't go up hills, but it got up here all right.

Did we want to go up this track?

Yeah, apparently we can turn round up there

when we get our panoramic view of the steel city.

All this way, for an aerial view of Sheffield.

But when you're travelling, not all expeditions are successful.

-Is there a pub on the top of this hill?

-I doubt it.

There's nothing worse than going to the top of a mountain,

only to find the weather's got so bad, you can't see a thing!

I think we'll go in the van, out the way for a bit.

Get out of the rain a bit?

Yeah, till it stops raining. Yeah, I've had enough.

So much for our panoramic view of Sheffield!

Put the kettle on.

Look at the state of it in here!

That's it, there.

-Is this the coffee?

-I don't know, but we'll have a bit.

The weather wasn't about to improve.

So, they gave up.

No time to hang around up here waiting for it to clear,

because Fred and Alf have to get to a Sheffield forge

before the shift ends.

But there's always time for another quick pint.

Fred reckons there's traction drivers often docked.

-Eh? You what?

-You always said traction drivers often might be docked.

Oh, yeah, well that's a fact. It's not too bad if you've got a lid.

It's no harder, it's just less pleasant, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah. If it's quite light, carry on, you know?

But, I mean, the mixture of oil and rain on your glasses,

and it becomes... vision is impossible.

Like, there were times when I could see better without the...

without the glasses than you could, you know, wearing 'em. And all.

And now, it's on to the forge.

There's some fair pieces of iron knocking about here, isn't there?

-Oh, aye, yeah.

-What are we going to see here, anyway?

Well, forging, really is, when the ingot comes from the steel maker,

it's like, a bit open grain, as you might say.

And forging into certain shapes consolidates the molecules

and makes it much stronger, you see.

-That's what it's really all about, you know?

-Yeah.

'Independent Forging was a specialist

'in the forging of large steel components

'for the aerospace and oil industries.

'The works is the former site of Daniel Doncaster and Sons,

'one of the oldest forgemasters in the world,

'which date back to the 1770s.

'The forging hammer is a seven-tonne model,

'made by B & S Massey of Manchester.

'They think it was constructed in the late 1800s,

'but nobody's really sure.

'Originally, it was driven by steam power,

'but two years ago they converted it to compressed air.'

-I'm going to forge this ring.

-Oh, are you ready?

Oh, right, I'll stand out your way.

I bet in the olden days,

there'd be a lot of men turning that around, wouldn't there?

Getting nearer.

I've got a massive compressed air one, 200 weight.

Best place we've been to, this.

That's a fair piece of tackle, ain't it?

That's an eight tonne, that one.

There's two eight tonnes, five tonne, a three tonne and two tonne.

It were hard in the old days before we had them machines.

-Big chains...

-Ten men on the other end.

-That's when you needed a sweat towel.

-Yeah, yeah.

Railway wagon wheel!

MUSIC: "1812 Overture" by Tchaikovsky

This is an iron tyre for a tank.

But this is exactly the way that the axles or the crankshaft

for a traction engine would have been forged.

CHURCH BELLS RING IN TIME TO THE HAMMER BLOWS

100 years ago when Fred's engine was built,

there were over 5,000 forges like this all over Britain.

Now, there are no more than 100.

Yeah, yeah. For everyone who's trying to earn a living in England

that's paid £300 a week, with a company car, saying,

"You can't do that cos you don't wear a tin hat,"

there'll be bloody, 20 men working and 60 looking after them.

Quite true, that, aye.

Funny how everybody who does forging,

when they've actually used their bloody tools,

they just drop them on the floor, you know?

Aye, he's like that, puts nowt back where it goes.

Yeah, yeah, I'm like that. "Where's it gone?" You know?

"Where's the tongs gone? Bloody hell, disappeared!"

-If you put everything away, you know where it is next time.

-Oh, aye.

-How long you worked here now?

-About 28... 28 year, me.

-Paul's been here about 32, haven't you?

-Bloody hell, that's a lot.

-Straight from school, like?

-Well, I've been in t'industry all me life, 64 now.

Last time we got made redundant here in 1999.

They closed it down altogether.

No work for it.

Our Managing Director bought it, sent for us back.

Somehow or other I've always been attracted to dangerous, dirty things, you know?

You know, like, if it's heavy or dirty or dangerous.

Women, women!

I've had three of them, you know? Bloody hell.

'It were fascinating, watching the forging.

'I've never seen forging before. I enjoyed it.'

'It were really good, I've never seen anybody making iron tyres before like them men did.

'You know, punching a hole through the middle.

'That intrigued me greatly, you know?

'Might even have a do at that with my own hammer, at home, like.'

I'd like a bigger hammer, actually, at home!

It looks so easy, but I'm sure it takes a lot of experience.

A lot of it seemed to be done by eye, didn't it?

I thought it were fantastic today.

And t'other thing that's come across is what an happy workforce it was.

They feel they're doing something...

I don't know, they were a good team, weren't they?

Aye, you've got to be.

We watched the two men at either side of the hammers.

They can't hear each other, they're just watching one another.

And each man knows what the other man's going to do next.

And when the shift finished, it was back to the pub.

Where've you driven from to get to Sheffield then on this?

Well, we don't know, we've been halfway up a mountain.

We went to the top of, uh, how do you pronounce it, Winstobank hill?

-Wincobank.

-Wincobank. Aye.

That bloody big hill, to the top of the hill...

-That's overlooking Meadowhall?

-..for an aerial view of Sheffield,

and when we got to the top, it was raining that hard, you couldn't see Sheffield!

So have things, like, changed over the last 30 years, sort of thing?

When we first started it was all handwork, all done by hand.

-Yeah.

-Brought from furnace by crane.

-Yeah, open the furnace door and a big spoon and hanging on like that.

Must've been exciting, even though it were hard.

Crazy days.

-How long have you been here, like?

-Left school at 15,

my dad didn't particularly want me to go and work at Doncaster's,

in a forge, which he'd done all his life.

And unbeknownst to him I went down and had an interview,

and got a job, purely by the fact that all my family already worked there.

-Two uncles, me dad...

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And in the past, during the war years -

two aunties, three aunties and a grandma.

Forging is in your blood and if it's not, you'll never do it.

I've done it for 42 years and never looked back

and still enjoy going to work.

After five generations, Pete's the last forgeman in his family.

On leaving Sheffield, they're half way through their grand tour.

But Fred's illness is making the travelling hard work.

He's going to have a few days off with some old friends in Derbyshire.

But on the way, there's one more place to see.

It's a museum that tells the story of early steelmaking here in Sheffield.

Abbeydale Industrial Handworks is the site of the Abbeydale Works,

an 18th-Century scythe-making works

with water wheels, a tilt hammer, and a crucible steel furnace.

A group of experts from Sheffield University

are going to attempt to make us some crucible steel.

That looks good.

Preserved well, isn't it?

They're lucky it's survived, so intact.

I think it's had a bit of, er, treatment.

Shall we have a look at the forge?

These are all right, aren't they?

They're called tilt hammers, these, you know?

When the water wheel outside turns the flywheel,

turns this bangle, the axle, you know,

all those noggins hit the end of the hammer shaft,

and it lifts up the hammer and bangs down.

So, in this place, they made scythe blades.

And they'd, like, get two pieces of ordinary mild steel or wrought iron,

and forge weld a strip of steel in between.

So, the edge were a bit of good stuff, you know?

Because steel was difficult and expensive to make,

it was mixed with wrought iron.

These tilt hammers were used to forge the mixture into blades.

A water wheel powers the hammers and bellows in the forge.

Large bellows create a good draught in the fire

and get the steel in the forge hot enough to work.

-That's really good, isn't it?

-You can actually see the intakes opening and closing.

Yeah, well the valves, pieces of leather.

It's a few cubic feet of wind goes through the pipes

every time one of them goes up and down.

Yeah, very impressive.

1700s style this, isn't it?

Oh, aye, yeah, yeah. You can see them with their silk stockings on in here.

-That's right, yeah.

-Powdered wig...

Aye, all that to blow the furnaces over there, the forges.

And now it's just a little electric motor, isn't it?

Come on.

What we looking at next?

We're going to the smelting department, you know?

Where they put the crucibles in the fire.

-In the furnace. 1829.

-Aye, bloody hell.

-Afternoon, Rod.

-Morning. All right?

We've come to have a look at your crucible furnace.

-Hiya.

-Alf.

-That's Alf.

Yeah, how's the fire going, Rod?

'Sheffield's success as a steel producing city

'really took off in the 1740s.

'Thanks to a breakthrough by Benjamin Huntsman,

'who operated a local foundry.

'His invention of the crucible steel process made it possible

'to make much harder and higher quality steel in great quantities.'

How much would you be able to make

out of that metal you get out of that pot?

Well, that one, probably...

We're doing these small ingots today,

so, probably 15, 20 pounds.

But the large pots that were originally used here

would be about 50 pounds.

Crucible steel were special stuff, weren't it?

-For edging tools and things like that.

-Yeah, files.

-Oh, aye, turning tools and all that, yeah.

-Yeah, yeah.

-Yeah.

So, it was a very important material

-to get the industrial revolution going.

-Oh, yeah.

'Before Huntsman, the quality of steel was unreliable

'and only 200 tonnes a year were produced in Sheffield.'

-This is how they used to do it, isn't it?

-That's right, yes.

These furnaces haven't been used

since the Second World War.

Though the team are suited up for protection,

it's a dangerous process.

'Within 100 years of Huntsman's discovery,

'Sheffield was producing 20,000 tonnes

'of crucible steel a year.

'An amazing 40% of steel production in the whole of Europe at this time.'

-I like that.

-That's nice.

Very good.

What do you do first of all, knock it over?

When the ingot has cooled down and solidified, it's time to break the mould.

Down off the wedge.

That'll drop the thing, then push it over, and it'll split open.

-You can't break these, can you?

-No, no, no.

Our piece of crucible steel.

-Excellent.

-There we are, you can have your tin hat back.

And that lump of steel will now go off to the rolling mill,

and probably be made into a bar or whatever.

You can see why they only used a bit at once, can't you?

Stuck on the end of... lumps of wrought iron.

I mean, everything, all lay tools and cutting tools, weren't they?

They were all like that.

I've actually got some where you can see the steel on one side and...

-the softer stuff, like, corroded to alloy, you know?

-Oh, right yeah.

Thanks for that, we'll see you later. We're off for tea.

All right!

Next stop, Derbyshire, where Fred is going to take it easy for a few days

as he stays with some old traction engine friends.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd - 2009

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