This is one of many films donated to the YFA by Armley Mill Industrial Museum, which also has other film of the locomotive works, as well as film of coal mining and engineering in Hunslett. Unfortunately no other information came with the film, so we don’t know who made it or for what purpose.  If it was made by just one of the two companies highlighted, it might be thought to be a promotional film; although it has a much more educational slant than a marketing one.   It is believed that the...

This is one of many films donated to the YFA by Armley Mill Industrial Museum, which also has other film of the locomotive works, as well as film of coal mining and engineering in Hunslett. Unfortunately no other information came with the film, so we don’t know who made it or for what purpose.  If it was made by just one of the two companies highlighted, it might be thought to be a promotional film; although it has a much more educational slant than a marketing one.  
It is believed that the film was made around 1968, the same year that the Labour Government under Harold Wilson launched their ‘I’m backing Britain’ campaign which was designed to persuade people to ‘buy British’.  In fact the film is similar to the early films of the Open University, and it might be thought to be one, if not for the fact that the OU didn’t start until 1969, and wasn’t taking students until the following year.  The film has the appearance, and background music, of a one-off TV programme from the 1960s – Fred Dibnah recently made a TV series with this title.


Earlier, and famously, Wilson came into power in 1964 with the clarion call for a ‘white hot technological revolution’. It was a time when British manufacturing was under threat from a resurgent Germany and Japan. This threat is clearly echoed in this film in the interviews. The film is certainly an historical document in the representing the views of some of British manufacturers at that time. It concentrates on the Hunslet Engine Company, and this obviously gives it a Yorkshire connection. The company was founded in 1864 (although not taking this name until 1902); and produced their first steam locomotive, the Linden, the following year, and their first export of a locomotive – the tenth one they built – to Java in Indonesia in 1866. They produced in all over 2,200 steam locomotives. They also shipped the last British-built industrial steam locomotive in 1971, again to Java (this is now back in Britain in working order).

In the 1930s they became pioneers in the development of the diesel engine. Like many other manufacturing companies, during the Second World War they combined engine making with the production of munitions. John Alcock, their Managing Director at the time of this film and seen being interviewed, took over from his father in 1958.  With the transfer of most freight from rail to road many locomotive works have closed.  Yet John Alcock’s belief that the company, although only small, would survive the competition, as expressed in the film, has been borne out as it continues to thrive – although the works on Jack Lane in Hunslet closed in 1995 (now at Maple Park, Lowfields Avenue, Leeds). It is now however part of the LH Group of Companies.

In fact the bespoke locomotives Hunslet makes now don’t look very different from the ones they manufactured back in 1968. Their speciality shunting engines – made for export – differ from the old British Rail ones in that the latter have a platform on the side at the front where the shunter would stand, as seen in the film. This also has a special place for the shunting pole: as the engine approaches a line of wagons to be picked up the shunter jumps off just before the buffers meet and, with his shunting pole hook, quickly couples up the engine to the wagons. With freight wagons little changed, and shunting without connecting the brake pipes still being practiced, doubtless this skill can still be witnessed in the marshalling yards of Britain and beyond.

References

Hunslet Engine Company

Hunslet Engine Company on Wapedia