Accompanying the television series, Fred Dibnah tells Britain's industrial history and picks out the machinery that made history. Travelling throughout Britain, Dibnah describes what life was really like for people in the industrial age and provides a list of industrial heritage sites to visit.

Britains favourite steeplejack and industrial enthusiastic, the late Fred Dibnah, takes us back to the 18th century when the invention of the steam engine gave an enormous impetus to the development of machinery of all types. He reveals how the steam engine provided the first practical means of generating power from heat to augment the old sources of power (from muscle, wind and water) and provided the main source of power for the Industrial Revolution. In Fred Dibnahs Age of Steam Fred shares his passion for steam and meets some of the characters who devote their lives to finding, preserving and restoring steam locomotives, traction engines and stationary engines, mill workings and pumps. Combined with this will be the stories of central figures of the time, including James Watts - inventor of the steam engine - and Richard Trevithick who played a key role in the expansion of industrial Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Join engineer, steeplejack and beloved storyteller Fred Dibnah, as he takes you on a personal tour through industrial Britain. Bringing to life landmark events from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century in his typically engaging and anecdotal style, Fred introduces the great inventors from the age of steam, describes the day-to-day operation of railways, mills, forges and factories, and paints a vivid picture of what life was like for the mill-hands, colliers and engineers who laboured in industrial Britain - the workshop of the world. With a comprehensive gazetteer, which lists details of over 230 places of industrial interest - from steam railways and ships, to windmills and watermills - Foundries and Rolling Mills is a glorious portrait of Britain at the height of its industrial power, from one of our most revered figures.

Britains favourite steeplejack and industrial enthusiastic, the late Fred Dibnah, takes us back to the 18th century when the invention of the steam engine gave an enormous impetus to the development of machinery of all types. He reveals how the steam engine provided the first practical means of generating power from heat to augment the old sources of power (from muscle, wind and water) and provided the main source of power for the Industrial Revolution. In Fred Dibnahs Age of Steam Fred shares his passion for steam and meets some of the characters who devote their lives to finding, preserving and restoring steam locomotives, traction engines and stationary engines, mill workings and pumps. Combined with this will be the stories of central figures of the time, including James Watts - inventor of the steam engine - and Richard Trevithick who played a key role in the expansion of industrial Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries.

You didn't just meet with Fred Dinah you were instinctively drawn close to him, his larger than life personality was truly infectious and his communication skills second to none. Fred had the uncanny and somewhat unique knack of talking through a TV camera so that the viewer actually felt a personal contact with him. The Bolton born steeplejack became nationally known and loved following a series of TV programs. Although an admirer of all things, Victorian he was what the modern media people call 'a natural', microphones and TV cameras did not faze him one bit. This publication takes the reader on a fascinating journey during the making of Fred's last TV series during 2004.

Fred Dibnah was a man born out of his time. His era should have been the 'magnificent age of British engineering' - the nineteenth century - and his heroes were the great industrial engineers of the period whose prolific innovations and dedicated work ethic inspired a national mood of optimism and captured the hearts of the British public. Fred Dibnah's Victorian Heroes tells the stories of some of these men - including George and Robert Stephenson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Joseph Whitworth - and what it was that made them such inspirational figures to Fred. What were their backgrounds? Where did their drive and vision come from? What sort of people were they at work and at home? And what was their contribution to the history of industry and engineering? Most of them - like Fred - were colourful, larger-than-life characters for whom no challenge was too great. Taking these fascinating characters as inspiration, Fred Dibnah's Victorian Heroes gets to the very heart of what allowed nineteenth-century Britannia to rule the waves . . .

Fred Dibnah's traction engine was a time capsule of Britain's industrial past. After he retired from steeplejacking he took to the road, looking at the achievements of the craftsmen, engineers, inventors and industrial workers whose endeavour made engines like his possible. This is a record of that journey.