Isambard Kingdom Brunel: My hero. ibid.
Astle Park Steam Rally … Fred often takes his 1912 Aveling and Porter roadroller to traction rallies. Fred Dibnah: Getting Steamed Up s1e2: The Great Dorset Steam Fair, BBC 2001
He bought his Aveling & Porter steamroller in 1966 from a Welsh scrap merchant for £175. It weighs 13 tons and took many years to restore to its former glory. ibid.
Over the years Fred has gained experience in restoration work. Much of what he knows has become a dying art. ibid.
Fred Dibnah visits the Great Dorset Steam Fair … ‘You can see it from miles and miles away.’ ibid.
The Dorset fair at night is one of the most beautiful sights you can see in Great Britain. ibid.
First of all there was water and wind, the earliest forms of power to drive machinery. Then came steam, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Britain led the world in harnessing the power of coal, water and steam to drive the engines that revolutionised transport and made mass production possible. The steam engine really is a fascinating thing. Fred Dibnah’s Age of Steam e1: The Early Pioneers, BBC 2003
The steam engine really is a fairly simple thing. There’s two main principles: the expansion of steam in a cylinder pushing a piston which is connected to a crank shaft or a connecting rod. And the second principle of course is the condensation of steam which creates a vacuum in the cylinder. ibid.
The steam turbine isn’t only used for generating electricity. It serves dozens of purposes in the world of industry. ibid.
Thomas Newcomen invented a brand new type of steam engine which was designed solely for one purpose: to pump water from deep mine shafts. The first one was installed here at Staffordshire at a colliery, and it proved to be the world’s most successful steam engine. ibid.
What was needed was a more efficient engine. And this is where James Watt came on to the scene ... In 1769 James Watt came up with the answer: he put together all the existing technology that were known about the steam engine at the time and came up with the revolutionary design that of course earned him the name the Father of the Steam Engine. ibid.
It was a Cornishman called Richard Trevithick who made some of the greatest advances in the 1790s and the early 1800s. ibid.
Mining was still a difficult and dangerous business. Sometimes it was the steam engine itself that made it dangerous. ibid.
In 1803 Richard Trevithick built a second road carriage which he drove around the streets of London. ibid.
So Trevithick turned his attention to developing a steam locomotive that would run on rails. ibid.
Steam power brought about a revolution in transport. It was one of Britain’s greatest contributions to the industrial world. In the age of steam the railways moved everything and everybody. Fred Dibnah’s Age of Steam e2: The Transport Revolution
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. 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 locamotive 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 Dibnah’s 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? 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. 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 Dibnah’s 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 £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 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 Dibnah’s Made in Britain e1: The Passion of a Lifetime, BBC 2005
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.