THE LAMBTON WORm

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 5th Year

Issue

Issue No.

1

Date Released

Sep 1951

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1THE KEY TO POWER
2. 2ROYAL CHAMPIONS
3. 3THE LAMBTON WORm

Story

Story No. within this Issue

3 / 3

Summary

BFI synopsis: a new pit tub tippler at Lambton colliery, County Durham.
NCB Commentary - Accidents can be useful! Here’s a set of derailed tubs that turned up one of the brightest ideas of the year.
Manager George Renwick, of Lambton in Durham, was down the pit on inspection when he came across these tubs off the rails. The couplings were still linked, he noticed.
That set him thinking. So you can tip tubs sideways, and they won’t uncouple. Let’s see how far they’ll go.
On the surface, they tried tipping them so far, then a bit further, till they had the maximum angle worked out.
Of course, there was an idea behind all this. Some of the engineering staff didn’t think much of it, and said so. But Renwick had his way, and they started building this odd looking rig down in the roadway.
They tested the structure, slowly to start with. There were still many sceptics. Was this really going to work? Yes it did, and it does - and we can’t blame George Renwick if he said "I told you so".
Here’s the idea. Instead of tipping tubs one by one into a chute, manager Renwick’s brainwave was the tip a whole train at a time, non-stop.
Now the full scale tippler - named the Lambton Worm after a local legendary monster - is in continuous use. 22 tons a time go down the chute in 50 seconds as the 55 tubs rattle past at 20 miles an hour.

Researcher Comments

Commentary recorded 7 August 1951.

Keywords

Science and technology; Mining; Accidents and disasters; Engineering

Locations

England; County Durham

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for synopsis
The National Archives COAL 32   /3 Scripts for Mining Review, 1949-1956

Credits:

Production Co.

Documentary Technicians Alliance

Sponsor

National Coal Board