MORE POWER TO HIS ELBOW

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 6th Year

Issue

Issue No.

12

Date Released

Aug 1953

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1SAVING CAMPAIGN
2. 2MORE POWER TO HIS ELBOW
3. 3OUTWARD BOUND

Story

Story No. within this Issue

2 / 3

Summary

BFI synopsis: Power loading at the coal face and the progress of mechanisation in the pits, longwall cutters, Meco-Moore machines, the German plough, conveyors and better pit props.
NCB Commentary - However hard our miners work - and they work harder than most of use would care to - they can’t hope to produce all the coal Britain needs by the old hand methods alone.
Nor is it right that they should. Who, in the 20th century, would want to condemn a man to a lifetime of this?
So, faster and faster, the machine is being brought in to help the miner. First, it was simply cutters at longwall faces, undercutting the coal for shotfirers to bring down some of it, - and for the men with the picks to complete the job.
Then there were conveyors to carry the coal away from the face to tye loading points - but men still had to shovel the coal onto the belt.
Today, we want more than that. We want machines which can do all the jobs - cut, the coal, bring it down, load it onto the conveyors. In 1951, the amount of coal which was cut and power-loaded was 8 1/2 million tons. In 1952, 11 million tons. Most of it was won by these Meco-Moore machines.
An all-British giant, this, tried and proved under many different conditions, giving an average output all over the country of 6 1/2 tons for every shift worked by a man at the face.
But even this is not enough. Every idea from every continent must be tried - like this German plough, thirteen of which are producing half a million tons of coal a year.
Or this American continuous miner, tearing off 45 tons of coal a man at the face.
But Britain’s narrow and difficult seams cannot be compared with the broad, easy seams of America, and there are very few places in our pits where these monsters can be used.
So the experiments for British machines to suit British conditions go on. Ordinary cutters are turned into cutters that bring down the coal without shotfiring, - or even into loaders which carry small shovels or flights on their chains instead of picks.
And behind the machines themselves, in this race to achieve maximum output, every other traditional technique must be overhauled.
We must have new pit props, for instance, designed to be rapidly put up and taken down around the swiftly advancing machines. At the beginning of 1952 there were 80,000 of these props in the pits - 300,000 by the end of the year.
So mechanisation at the coal face is going ahead. We still need all the strength, skill and hard work that our miners can give. In return we must give them the fastest-working and most efficient tools our engineers can devise.
Only so can our coal - and Britain’s prosperity - be won. And it is being won.

Researcher Comments

BFI sources suggest that this story was made using stock footage. Commentary recorded 6 July 1953.

Keywords

Transport; Mining; Engineering

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for Synopsis
Film User   Vol.8 No.87 January 1954, p32.
The National Archives COAL 32   /3 Scripts for Mining Review, 1949-1956

Credits:

Production Co.

Documentary Technicians Alliance

Sponsor

National Coal Board