News on Screen

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 1st Year

Issue

Issue No.

6

Date Released

Feb 1948

Length of issue (in feet)

838

Stories in this Issue:

• 1. Diesel Locos
• 2. Miners visiting Ruhr
• 3. Hound Trails

Story

Story No. within this Issue

2 / 3

Summary

BFI synopsis: A tour of the Ruhr by British mining engineers.
COI Commentary - In July, I was one of thirty miners chosen by Colliery Consultative Committees to go to the Ruhr and see for ourselves what the German mines are like.
The morning after we arrived in Germany, we went from our hotel at Duisberg to the Headquarters of the North German Coal Commission, which is in the former home of the Krupps family. We were welcomed by Brigadier Gillman, of the Coal Commission, and Professor Schmidt, President of the German Union of Mine-workers, who told us what we were going to see.
Our first visit was to the Mine Zollverein. This mine lies between Essen and Dortmund. We knew these names, if only from the accounts of our bombing in the war, and were able to see how effectively the RAF plastered the German mining and heavy industrial centres.
After the mess and piles of rubble we passed on the way, we were impressed by the order and tidiness of the surface layout at Zollverein. I don’t think you’d find a lot of British mines that could compare with it at present.
The Coal Plough, which we saw on the surface as well as underground, is a wonderful machine because it’s so simple. It’s used in longwall working, and just slides along the face shearing off the coal and lading it on to the conveyor. But you couldn’t use it in a lot of our mines, because our coal face conditions would not be suitable.
We also saw the Koepe Winder. This is an endless rope attached to two cages, driven by a pulley arrangement. This is designed to wind to a depth of fifteen hundred yards.
Of all our visits, one of the things that stuck in our minds most was the Brown Coal Mine. We should call it Opencast Working, but it’s on a much bigger scale than anything of the kind I’ve ever seen before, and more mechanised too. The seam is eighty to ninety feet below the surface, and is a hundred and eighty feet thick. It is excavated in two lifts of ninety feet each, and the coal is got out by electric bucket excavators on an endless belt which produces four hundred and fifty tons an hour and is only manned by three men. The coal is loaded straight on to twenty ton coal wagons which are drawn by electric locos direct to the briquetting plant.
We didn’t only study technical methods - we had a chance to get together with the German miners, their wives and families.
We also compared their welfare facilities with our own. This canteen was pretty rough and ready, and the food didn’t look much of a meal for a pitworker, but the welcome we got there was all right - it seems as if mining hospitality’s the same all the world over.
Medical facilities were very modern. Most pits had sunray lamps and were equipped to cope with accidents and treat such complaints as arthritis and rheumatism.
At Bochum we went to a Transit camp. New mining recruits come here for a time before being allocated to a particular pit, and are selected for the most suitable type of work. Here we said goodbye to our ex-enemies who are now our friends. The atmosphere was a good omen for the future when we shall all be working for the same end.

Keywords

Mining; Scenery and travel

Locations

Ruhr

Footage sources

Welt Im Film

Written sources

The National Archives INF 6   /391
British Film Institute Databases   Used for synopsis
Hogenkamp, A. P., unpublished DPhil thesis   pxv.

Credits:

Production Co.

Crown Film Unit

Director

Graham Wallace

Camera

J. Jones

Cutter

Jocelyn Jackson

Cutter

John Legard

Producer

John Taylor

Commentator

Maurice Denham

Sponsor

Ministry of Fuel and Power

This series is held by:

Film Archive

Name

British Film Institute (BFI)

Email

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nonfictioncurators@bfi.org.uk
For commercial/footage reuse enquiries:
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Web

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Phone

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Fax

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Address

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Notes

The BFI National Archive also preserves the original nitrate film copies of British Movietone News, British Paramount News, Empire News Bulletin, Gaumont British News, Gaumont Graphic, Gaumont Sound News and Universal News (the World War II years are covered by the Imperial War Museum).

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