Portrait of an engineer

Found this film on you tube about the Vulcan foundry.

Elfin safety would have had a field day.

Look at Ted Wilson "reading" the mic 14 mins in to the film, I think he needs to go back to night school.

Looks so strange now.

Hundreds of people going to work and making useful things for profit and using real skills

Everyone I know nowadays either works for the Government, a service industry or Financial services.

....all producing precisely nothing useful for the world

Thanks for posting

Was chatting to an ex council employee recently, on his way out with liver cancer

A Job for life, Nice pension etc, all paid for by les government

The retired guys had a reunion recently and the over riding question at this reunion was

"what exactly did we do with our lives???"

Edited By Ady1 on 13/07/2013 10:37:36

Great old movie. Thanks for posting.

Aye, thems was the days, when men were men and only pooves wore safety glasses or gloves when splashing molten metal about while balancing on a plank on two saw horses.

Thankfully that ethic is still alive and well in some places today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMOBqRVDOYQ

An old friend of mine had a "perspective" about H&S his view was that it all started with a need to find somewhere to shunt the "know all" knobheads into.....so they create the H&S industry and "promote" all the forementioned into it....but this monster took on a life of it's own....

Whatever happened to good old common sense

Whatever happened to good old common sense

Every business has three phases in it's business cycle before it becomes useless and the UK plc is no different

1. Entrepreneurs run the business- lots of activity

2. accountants run the business- less activity

3. lawyers run the business- it all goes belly up

Britain is currently in the accountant/lawyer phase with H&S, government pen pushers, Insurance companies and Litigation Lawyers running the system

Creating too much wealth is also a big problem

The more wealth your society produces.... the more zero wealth creation government drones and busybodies your society can support

The contrast between Britain and the Republic of Ireland for example is stark

They're bust, so there's no money for silly stuff

The last time I was there I travelled for two weeks outside Dublin, did about 1000 miles and saw a grand total of two policemen

In Edinburgh I walk out the door and trip over someone from the council

Edited By Ady1 on 13/07/2013 15:11:01

now thats propper scary stuff! Im no fan of h&s but crikey!! Pretty sure its all housing now.

Maybe, elf and safety made a mess of it for us all, and stopped all common sense------- and production as we seem to be the only people who stick to it. ???????????

There is a dark force out there, whoooooooo.

Bri

Ya dont see so many pipe smokers either now!

It was always a nice aroma a pipe. When i was a lad, as they say up here, some one always had one burning. I remember walking down though the mule spinning following a manager, who was a right so and so. His smock coat was on fire after he thought he had put his pipe out after having a crafty stoke up. He was a bit red faced when he noticed, but not a soul dared laugh. Ah those were the days --

Bri

Edited By Boiler Bri on 13/07/2013 21:21:44

Great film. One of the comments sums it up:

"Ted's the man only thing missing was the Superman costume"

Heartbreaking to see what's been lost

cheers

bp

Facinating thanks for the posting also points to other interesting clips

Bob

After watching that film i thought i would see if there were any films of Crewe works early days and found one from 1911. Watching that would give any "elf n safety" men an instant heart attack. Sorry but i don't know how to put a link to it, but if you go to You Tube and type in "Crewe Works" you should be able to find it no problem.

Cheers Derek.

There's a ton of good utube stuff for model engineers

Maybe a dedicated thread would be a good idea, the TSR2 and new metro factory are two recent links which spring to mind

Vulcan Foundry produced a new locomotive every two weeks for 100 years!! they were exported all over the world. What has happened to our engineering industry?

Phil

Nice film - but it contains the signs of Britain's industrial decline though, middle class engineer patronising the working class guys and colonial natives with pats on the back. Techniques that hadn't changed since before the 1st world war producing steam locos well into the 1950s. This was less than 10 years before Japan rolled out its bullet train network but looks like its from another era.

Ady1
I agree a thread dedicated to all good engineering please no rubbish,

look forward to it
Bob

Gray.

I don't wan't to derail this thread, but I realised long ago that the bail-out was never intended to help Joe Public. It was done to maintain and reinforce the status quo.

We should all be aware that what has happend in Cyprus - the so-called 'haircut' of their bank accounts - may well happen elsewhere, including here.

Martin.