Coal Mining Today

Trainees are busy learning "a career rather than a job" at the world's first Mines Mechanisation Training Centre in Sheffield.

In post-war Britain, "our country's future largely depends on how much coal can be won from underground" and mechanisation is emphatically presented as the way forward. At the Mines Mechanisation Training Centre there's an artificial coalface at which apprentices hone their drilling and coal-cutting skills, as well as the loading of coal onto the Duckbill Shaker Conveyor to transport it to the surface. There’s also a look at the action in the welding shop.

This government film is a public record, preserved and presented by the BFI National Archive on behalf of The National Archives, home to more than 1,000 years of British history.