Please read Understanding catalogue records for help interpreting this information and Using footage for more information about accessing this film.

Title: ROMANCE OF ENGINEERING, a

Reference number: 0750

Date: 1938

Director: [d. Stanley Russell]

Sponsor: William Beardmore and Co.

Production company: Scottish Films (1928) Limited

Sound: sound

Original format: 16mm

Colour: bw

Fiction: non-fiction

Running time: 30.27 mins

Description: Production of steel components at William Beardmore & Co's Parkhead Forge, Glasgow. Made for screening at the 1938 Empire Exhibition.

Used by the company training officer with new apprentices up until 1977.

Preservation of this film supported by the National Heritage Memorial Fund.

Credits: [ph. Henry Cooper & Graham Thomson
comm.w. Stanley Russell
comm.s. James McKechnie
cam. Graham Thomson]
Albion Truphonic Sound System

Shotlist: Credits (.06); Montage sequence of cars, buses and trains. Brief shots of Buchanan Street and St Enoch stations. Gordon Street, St Vincent Street and George Square (1.02); Beardmore buildings at Parkhead. Entrance to main office in Shettleston Road. Visitors arrive, introduced to Chairman, Sir James Lithgow. Sir James describes how company came into existence over dramatisation and stills. Brief shots of Great War and airship R34 (built at Inchinnan and first to cross Atlantic) with voice-over on company's activities (4.32); Drawing Office. Steel Foundry. Duplicate casting is made in wood, pattern for "Queen Elizabeth" rudder. Pattern erected in a pit and prepared by moulders. Mr Lindsay, manager of the foundry, explains the moulders' job. Preparation of mould continues. Two ladels full of molten steel arrive from furnaces and are poured into the mould. The finished casting is lifted from the sand pit and taken to the machine shop by train (9.02); Armour plate rolling. Slab of white hot steel is lifted from the re-heating furnace to the rolling mill. Mr Service, in charge of this operation, explains. Slab runs back and forth through rolling mill. Shots of an 8,000 ton press for flattening and bending plates. Planing machine cuts the plates to the correct dimensions (12.20); The Machine Shop. Shots of shop floor from overhead crane. Shot of 50 ft. boiler drum on profiling machine. Turbine reduction gear and diesel engine crankshaft being machined. Mr Henderson, the manager, explains over shots of other machines (14.47); Tool Shop (16.07) Machine Shop (16.53); Melting Shop. Magnetic crane lifts pig iron and scrap from railway trucks into charging box. Charging box swung round into furnace. Mr McFarlane, in charge of this operation, explains the process. Samples are taken from furnace and analysed in laboratory. Alloys added to furnace. Molten steel flows out of the furnace into ladels which move off down the works to be discharged into a mould (20.45); A 125 ton octagonal ingot is lifted from mould and then forged and shaped in giant press. Mr Wright, the supervisor, explains process. Railway axles shaped in light forge, then re-heated, tempered, straightened and machined (26.09); Power plant. Mr Lewis, in charge, explains over shots of plant (27.19); Ambulance. An employee has a cut attended to at the First Aid post (28.06); Inspection of cadets. The Beardmore's Cadet Corps is inspected by Captain R D Linton of the 7th Battn. HLI, accompanied by company representatives and unit administrator, Captain Samuel Allen, MP and Mr W E Dickie (29.22); An aerial view of Beardmore's (30.05); ecs (30.27)