Fred Dibnah’s Backyard Collection, new DVD. Fred Dibnah was a steeplejack, engineer and eccentric who became a TV presenter, cult figure and latterly a national institution. Fred was legendary for his backyard which contained everything from a mineshaft to a fully-functioning steam-powered workshop – all built from parts that Fred had been able to salvage over the years.
Disk one: 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 garden, shows us how everything works and demonstrates some of the jobs he can do in it.
Disk two: 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.
Disk Three: Fred’s Coal Mine
It’s not everybody who has a coal mine in their back garden, but not everybody had a garden 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.
View clip
Details
Format: PAL
Region: Region 2
Number of discs: 3 disks
Classification: Exempt
Studio: Contender Entertainment Group
DVD Release Date: 16 Nov 2009
Run Time: 462 mins
DVD cover image added.
Just added more details of each of the DVDs and a video clip, my thanks go to Acorn Media UK for this.
Amazon says this DVD will be released tomorrow, rather than late December. Would make a great Christmas present.
Yup, Amazon are shipping this DVD right now!
HMV.com are selling it for £22.99, not £14.99 as shown…
Thanks for pointing that out Gigety (£22.99! ouch…almost as bad as the BBC shop), I’ll have a poke at the database see why the price is wrong.
Update: that’s all the prices checked, I’ve had to drop HMV (and BBC shop) because they were much more expensive than the likes of Argos, perhaps they will drop their prices after Christmas.
Anyone have any idea as to how I can get this set in a format that I can watch in the US? Our DVD players wont read a Region 2 disc. There are Fred fans in the US too! Any help is appreciated.
Jeff
Ahh, the curse of region locked DVDs
You could always buy the DVD and take it to a local video/computer store and ask them to burn a copy of it onto a region free disk for you. Google has a fair number of links to software that can do it on your computer if you have a region free DVD writer in your computer.