MARIETTA ON TRIAL

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 7th Year

Issue

Issue No.

1

Date Released

Sep 1953

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1LIFT ON THE WAY
2. 2PIECE OF CAKE
3. 3MARIETTA ON TRIAL
4. 414 DAYS

Story

Story No. within this Issue

3 / 4

Summary

BFI synopsis: American Marietta miner at work driving roadway through stone at Wellesley Colliery, Scotland.
NCB Commentary - At Wellesley Colliery, Scotland, the Mighty Marietta is tearing its way forward into 7 foot of stone, testing itself driving a roadway in the hard rock strata.
Temporary supports have to be fixed before the 30-ton Marietta can move forward. Tony Kelly on one side sets a metal screw-prop, with Bill Porter as his opposite number.
Now cutting starts again. As the big blades start turning and the Marietta crawls into the face on its caterpillar tracks, a road is being out 7 feet high and 12 feet wide. Bill Spowart, engineer in charge of this project, checks on progress. You can see by the regualr markings on the roof how the Marietta smooths its path forward.
The men at Wellesley have fitted water sprays to keep down the dust when working in this stone of different hardnesses. Bill Rae controls the mixture of water and compressed air from the driving position.
All that the Marietta outs falls onto its built-in scraper conveyor, just behind the blades. Working in coal, this conveyor could load away 3 1/2 tons a minute.
Since the Marietta is only being tried out here on road driving, stone disposal is a makeshift business. Two men run tubs down to a chute and the spoil is collected at a lower level.
The Marietta seems to be the engineers’ answer to the problem of driving new underground roadways safely and quickly. If the experiments at Wellesley are successful, we may see more of these monsters breaking into new ground in the race to get at the nation’s hidden coal reserves.

Researcher Comments

According to bfi records, this story was researched by Francis Gysin in April 1953 and then filmed on the 6th July 1953. Commentary recorded 4 August 1953.

Keywords

Science and technology; Mining; Road transport; Engineering

Locations

Scotland

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for Synopsis
Film User   Vol.8 No.89 March 1954, p138.
The National Archives COAL 32   /3 Scripts for Mining Review, 1949-1956

Credits:

Support services

C. F. M. Coton

Production Co.

Documentary Technicians Alliance

Director

Francis Gysin

Support services

Francis Gysin

Camera

Kenneth Reeves

Sponsor

National Coal Board

Camera

Wolfgang Suschitzky