Fred Dibnah's Backyard Collection   Starring: Fred Dibnah Acorn Media UK RRP: £24.99 AV9721 Certificate: E Available 05 October 2009

Experience the private world of Fred Dibnah with an invitation to join him for a guided tour of his backyard. This extraordinary , museum-worthy collection of steam powered machinery, much of it rescued and restored in Fred’s fight for the heritage of the industrial world, are here revealed in a collection that features over six hours of previously unseen footage...

Fred Dibnah's Backyard Collection is a three disc box set which consists of three different programmes.

First up is Back Street Mechanic: Fred always described himself as a ‘back street mechanic’ and the workshop in his garden where he did his ‘mechanicing’ was a one-off. It was all assembled from scrap and the cast offs from old mills and factories but it was probably the finest working example of a steam powered engineering workshop in the country. Fred takes us on a tour of the backyard, showing us how everything works and demonstrating some of the jobs he can do in it.

Disc two contains Fred's Engines: Fred will always be associated with his two most famous engines, his steam roller Betsy and his Aveling and Porter convertible tractor. Here for the first time we hear from Fred the full story of his restoration of these two engines, see some of the work that went into the rebuild of the tractor and hear about some of his adventures on them including his famous Last Drop story when the roller ran out of control and crashed on a hill in Bolton.

And finally, the last disc contains Fred's Coal Mine: It’s not everybody who has a coal mine in their backyard, but not everybody has one like Fred’s. In the last years of his life, building a fully working replica mine complete with a 100 foot mineshaft, fully working pit head gear and an inclined plane railway became one of Fred’s great passions. Here Fred tells us about his plans in full, about his reasons for creating the mine and about his battles with the planners and we see the most comprehensive footage in existence of work on the mine.

The one thing that comes across on this collection is just how passionate Dibnah is about his subject. For those who want to learn a little more about technology of a bygone era, then this collection helps put a new slant on just how robust the machines really are.

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Pete Boomer