Yorkshire - River of Coal

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 21st Year

Issue

Issue No.

9

Date Released

May 1968

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1Rapid Transit
2. 2County Durham - Marian Pickering
3. 3Yorkshire - River of Coal

Story

Story No. within this Issue

3 / 3

Summary

NoS synopsis: Seven Yorkshire collieries keep Ferrybridge Power Station, one of the largest in Britain, supplied with five million tons of coal a year.
NCB Commentary - Ferrybridge in Yorkshire. One of Britain’s largest electricity generating stations.
Ferry bridge runs on coal, of course, and the fuel reaches it from seven neighbouring collieries in two ways.
First, there are Merry-go-round trains - each made up of 30 - 40 ton wagons which are automatically weighed and unloaded on the move.
Then there are barges which bring even more coal along the river from which Ferrybridge draws its water supply.
In the hopper control room, technicians supervise both rail and barge unloading - soon to be over 5 million tons of coal a year.
Ferrybridge is not just one station, it’s three, labelled A, B & C. In full production Ferrybridge will generate 2,470 megawatts.
That’s enough juice to keep nearly a million and a quarter two-bar electric fires burning.
From Whitwood and Fryston; Wheldale and Park Hill; from Primrose Hill; from Water Haigh and Kellingley, 5 million tons every year of good Yorkshire coal flow in.
Today cranes and grabs have given way to a new million pound riverside wharf, where newstyle barges are unloaded in a revolutionary way.
A 150 h.p. tug pushes in a train of three coupled barges.
There are 12 such trains on the job, and 7 tugs to move them.
On arrival each barge with 200 tons of coal aboard is nudged along-side by a steel arm, which manoeuvres it on to an underwater cradle.
Then up it goes, all 200 tons of it.
Up 40 ft. into the air, so that the coal can be tipped in one go into the waiting hoppers.
Then down goes the empty barge, down back into the water ready for another round trip back to the colliery.
The whole operation takes just over four minutes.
From the hoppers the coal is taken by covered conveyors to the stock piles ready for its final journey into the power station boilers.
Ferrybridge’s heart is the control room from which all these megawatts are distributed through the National Grid. From here are controlled the huge turbines in the generating ahlls, and back of them lie the 7 Yorkshire Collieries that keep the whole thing going.
Ferrybridge, a power house on a river of coal.

Keywords

Energy resources

Locations

Yorkshire; England

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases
Films on Coal Catalogue   1969, p.55
The National Archives COAL 32   /12 Scripts for Mining Review

Credits:

Sponsor

National Coal Board

Production Co.

National Coal Board Film Unit