Stripping Down And Overhauling Gigantic Vehicles [4K] | Engineering Giants [S1 All Episodes] | Spark

[Music] one aircraft transformed the world first permission to carry out a high power ground run with two decks carrying over 500 passengers and wings the width of a football pitch it was twice the size of any airliner before the boeing 747 affectionately known as the jumbo jet okay going up on one and four it's still an engineering marvel it's just awesome the power of these things now as 1747 victor x-ray is stripped to its bare bones and given the biggest overhaul of its life there's a rare opportunity to explore deep inside its hidden features wow this this is pretty cramped that is massive a 200 strong team of highly skilled engineers take on the challenge of checking over 20 000 parts of this mighty aircraft if we don't take that out now that crack will just run and run and run [Music] safety is paramount in this finely balanced machine every component from its engines to its kettles must be intricately examined for damage the amount of knowledge and experience we need to learn is just incredible i've got three children they're very proud that mummy works on airplanes well when you see it barreling down the runway as well 140 150 knots do you think i did then boxer and we'll reveal what happens to a jumbo when it reaches the end of its working life [Music] this is engineering giants [Music] i'm rob bell i'm a mechanical engineer and i've always loved to get my hands on complex machines to discover how they work i'm tom wigglesworth an electrical engineer with a passion for big machines and this is victor x-ray the 747 that's about to let us in to all its engineering secrets this is the shortest flight this plane will no doubt ever do it's flying just 132 miles from heathrow to cardiff airport and in a few moments time this is where the 747 will arrive this enormous maintenance hangar [Music] all planes are regularly maintained but every six years 747s come here for a complete overhaul that means that they're stripped right down every part is meticulously checked before being reassembled and sent back out into service [Music] this is the first time that british airways have allowed cameras to film the complete overhaul of one of their aircraft and we'll be there for every critical stage in the engineering process this is a perfect opportunity for me and rob to see deep within the boeing 747 and appreciate how amazing these enormous machines are [Music] so there's your aircraft coming now [Music] victor x-ray was the 1172nd jumbo to be manufactured by boeing [Music] it was delivered to the airline 14 years ago and has since flown 36 million miles equivalent to 1500 times around the world checks please as captain doug brown shuts down the engines and hands the plane over to the cardiff engineering team i've been offered a rare glimpse inside the flight deck hey doug thank you for letting me in here this is a problem let's have your boy's dream isn't it absolutely everybody's dream what is the least used or pressed switch to be honest very few of them get used in flight when the 747 400 was designed in 1989 it moved from being a three-crew airplane with a flight engineers panel there which had thousands of buttons dials and gauges and a full-time flight engineer to an automated two-crew airplane with just two pilots so this is a simplified version this is in some ways yes but what's going on behind the scenes is quite complex the actual heart of the airplane is this flight management computer and what that allows us to do is to program the airplane and the autopilot of the aircraft with a lot of the information before flight and then as we go through the flight we're actually using the flight management computer to control the aircraft as much as anything else on the airplane in the case of raw flying what's the minimum amount of controls you'd need in the absolute worst case you get you can fly the aircraft using these three basic instruments okay ultravisual horizon airspeed indicator an old tweeter i don't know of any case where 747's got down to flying on those instruments there is a huge amount of redundancy built into the airplane [Music] now it's time for the 200 million pounds worth of 747 to be carefully towed into the maintenance hangar where it will live for the next five weeks [Music] i always wondered what it'd be like to be part of the ground crew at heathrow i'm guessing getting a bit of a feel for it now [Music] handbrake on good to go now i can finally climb aboard through what is currently the only way in a maintenance hatch in the belly of the plane welcome welcome aboard yes like 319. thank you very much how's your flight excellent thank you oh cheers there we are first class it's pretty spacious up here very spacious been starting c1a how's the view from up there i'll show you oh that's the stuff absolutely yeah this is 1a reserved for the uh the creme de la creme absolutely which makes this seat what mick jagger's girlfriend i'll do [Music] now that victor x-ray is safely inside the hangar the engineering team can begin the monumental task of stripping the jumbo back to its aluminium shell and forensically examining all of its critical parts for the smallest defect because number one to us is safety safety safety safety we are looking after people's lives here you can't make any mistakes you'll be right all the time you know there's no garages at 36 000 feet over the next five weeks engineers will work in teams within different areas of the plane methodically searching for any signs of damage amongst victor x-rays six million components one day we come into work and we'll be doing the cabin which which is very involved there's all sorts of different disciplines of engineering that the cabin holds and the next day we could be on the wing next day we could be doing the engine runs at the end of the check which is pretty pretty exciting this complex operation will take over thirty thousand working hours with the team having to complete 12 000 separate jobs we pretty much run seven days 24 hours general manager bill kelly is in charge of the maintenance facility how many years would that be flying for well this aircraft could fly um upwards of uh 25 years right so yeah absolutely a very robust very reliable uh strong aircraft and when well-maintained as we do there they they'll go on for many many years yet bill and his team are under massive pressure to finish victor x-ray's overhaul on time on the same day it's due for completion the jumbo is scheduled to fly passengers to south america delays can cost millions of pounds you know you get something wrong in maintenance where it delays you by a day or two days it can really start to impact the rest of your operation so you need to be on the ball you know much of the work on victor x-ray's fuselage needs to be carried out at height the tip of its tail fin is 20 meters above the ground so the aircraft will be surrounded by this rig designed by these engineers specifically to fit a 747 it's not until you get right up close to the tail fin like i'm here now you get a sheer sense of scale for the whole thing the tip to the ground is almost 70 foot and looking back along to the front of the aircraft is a perspective i've never seen before it's seriously impressive [Music] the first big engineering challenge is to test one of the plane's heftiest components the 18 wheeled landing gear locked into the scaffolding rig the plane can't be propped up like a car so it's 180 ton weight is supported on three jumbo sized jacks as the floor is lowered [Music] so i can see clear ground now between the wheels and the floor a failure of the mechanical systems that lower the landing gear could be disastrous so this is the only occasion when engineers have the opportunity to check that the wheels can drop safely if the pilot has to rely on gravity oh geez and here they come the landing gear weighs as much as a double-decker bus so if it was simply allowed to fall down it could potentially cause serious damage it's getting the front one done so its mechanisms are designed to offer enough resistance to control the speed of deployment so now they drop the guys are just giving them a push to get them finally locked into place when if you're in air and you had to do that the pilot would just kind of swing the plane a bit and get them to swing out and lock and for the back gears there the air pressure that's flowing past it would lock those back into place what are these one are these two plates at the top here well on the nose wheel you've got no brakes so when the aircraft takes off the wheels are spinning uh pretty fast and so those are basically big scaff plates the tires will hit them and it just slows them down and stops them okay okay inside victor x-ray the cabin team are preparing to strip out all the seats melanie getters and janice nash are among a growing number of female engineers working at the facility you say you work for british airways everybody knows the label the brand and they assume that your um cabin crew you know they don't naturally assume that you work in engineering so it's something to be proud of i've got three children they're very proud that mummy works on airplanes and fixes airplanes so that's definitely one to tell the kids yeah you go go home from work one day and you call your friends saying about getting stuck in the office and you go and say i've been walking the wing today and they're like wow it's great through rigorous training engineers must learn every facet of the 747. [Music] stan williams first worked on the jumbo 19 years ago and flying on one has never been the same since i'm listening for everything you listen you can't help it i wish i didn't sometimes i'll put headphones on because you don't want to hear there's lots of noises different noises that go on on an aircraft when when it's in flight and but you can't help it this is in our blood if you like before everything disappears from the cabin this is the um csd's office cabin crew member becky wadsworth has agreed to reveal some aspects of working on a 747 she spent over 10 000 hours in the air on planes like victor x-ray where space is extremely tight these are the ovens these are the ovens on an average flight becky and her team will serve 300 passengers over a ton of food and drinks is it true that when there's two pilots on board they have to have a different meal that's absolutely so you know should there be something wrong with the chicken for example then you don't want them both coming downhill with the same thing and it's those little flash points i mean who decides first it's normally the captain captain first co-pilot guess what's left absolutely i mean the captain will often say you choose first oh what a lovely english tradition a 14-hour flight in cramped conditions is hard work so today's 747 crews are able to use a secret compartment above the passengers heads up the stairs here is the the crew rest area space is of a premium isn't it appearing absolutely koozie oh wow so what's the longest flight you do it's about sort of 14 hours from singapore and in that time then how long would you get to spend enjoying this luxury you'd get about yeah sort of three and a half hours rest so i think what you also should have is a little button to call a member of the public up to help back down in the cabin the next test is on a critical safety component that airlines hope their passengers will never see that was impressive failure of the shoots is not an option with lives depending on them they must inflate within seconds and stay inflated so all 12 shoots are sent to the interiors workshop for rigorous testing wow it's huge here specially trained engineers like michael wake ensure that the slides are leak-free and inflate at incredibly high speeds basically they've got to um open up within a certain time limit okay which on this particular unit is three seconds okay so what's the process behind inflating one of these the door open yep and then the cylinder then charges 3px 300 psi and that's that's this here yeah there's a huge technical challenge with the inflation of such a large device to inflate something the size of an aircraft life jacket a small canister can provide enough air but the same system would require a three meter long canister on an escape shoot so instead when triggered the canister of compressed carbon dioxide and nitrogen delivers only an initial boost the clever technique is that these gases are forced through a narrow gap which causes them to accelerate rapidly this acceleration creates a vacuum that then sucks in enough ambient air to inflate the entire slide in three seconds [Music] that was pretty quick yep three seconds we're happy with that yeah wow and look at it i mean it's all in there absolutely solid testing the escape shoot is the easy part now like a parachute the 30 square meters of material must be folded precisely back into its container measuring just half a square meter and that typically that'll take how long six hours of hard labor wow it's as much an art as science [Music] it's all too easy to take flying for granted as passengers we're oblivious to the fact that the enormous metal tube we're traveling in is flying through the air at close to 600 miles an hour and at a height similar to everest an atmosphere unable to support life engineer gavin beverstak is showing me how victor x-ray pumps air from its engines into the cabin to create an atmospheric pressure similar to conditions on the ground due to rising altitude means a decrease in pressure but also due to comfort for passengers it has to be maintained because obviously we're on the ground we're at 14.7 psi and as you're rising through the air it reduces down and once you get below 10 psi you're starting to it's not very comfortable you can start having breathing problems and it is so thin that you out you will struggle but the greater the pressure of air that these pipes pump into the cabin the stronger the fuselage needs to be that would add weight to the aircraft so there's a compromise planes usually fly with the pressure equivalent to between six and eight thousand feet comparable to the world's highest cities that means reduced oxygen and is one of the reasons we often feel tired on a flight pressurizing the cabin can also cause metal fatigue because as air is pumped in and out of the aircraft its fuselage expands and contracts you can see all the dimples along the skin of the plane which when it's pressurized up in the air all gets smoothed out it's a pretty amazing bit of engineering but this frequent flexing of the fuselage can cause cracks it's one of the major reasons why victor x-ray is undergoing this intensive operation in order to thoroughly examine every inch of the airliner's internal shell engineers have to remove almost every fixture and fitting inside the cabin some 747s can take over 500 passengers but airlines can use tracks in the floor to choose their own seating plan on victor x-ray mcgregor and his team must strip out 299 seats mick with the right allen key to just sort of steal yourself a bit of extra leg room in flight no it wouldn't hurt unless you've got a hammer and a drift with you as well you'll never get past security no you wouldn't they are light they're lighter than a settee aren't they yeah there you go done once removed victor x-ray seats are sent to the interior's workshop to be reupholstered and put through their paces by veteran seat tester mark jago so is it your job then to sit in this chair watch a few films play a few games and then say yeah it's a terrible job but somebody's got to do it back in the hangar work continues in the cabin all these side walls are yet to come out all the dados on the bottom 300 floor panels must be removed all the center trough area there gets reworked 180 window protectors and blinds taken out and 140 sidewall panels stripped off [Music] this is the skeleton the plane here this is the um behind here that's the framework aluminium frame yeah it's all aluminium we're now still steel's too heavy running in aircraft will be as much as possible than you and that installation is pretty vital isn't it minus 50 degrees outside there uh yes it is i believe it's about minus 56 degrees around 35 000 feet that's enough to protect you from that minus 50 yard outside it's two days into the overhaul and most of the first class cabin fittings have been removed the team can now begin the painstaking task of searching every inch of the internal frame for the smallest of defects lo and behold we found a little crack down in the corner which we're going to put right yeah your favorite seat 1a shift manager paul thomas has discovered a minor crack in one of victor x-ray's floor supports the corner which is right in the corner you can see the tail tail and it runs right to the corner they normally emanate from from fastener holes or rivets and then run out or sharp edges you know yeah well you can see you can see the light yeah it's tracking so um yeah we pretty much got to replace that part now and you you visually inspect the whole structure absolutely if we don't if we don't take that out now that crack will just run and run and run and run and run so we found it now so the floorboards will come up we'll derive it all this area just for that i mean just for that small little crack yeah reassuring yeah it is reassuring but yeah because i i mean my car is you know call that a call that a crack i'll show you no lay-bys at 38 000 feet i'm afraid no lay-bys in the sky there are no limbs in the sky absolutely it's day four of the overhaul and works beginning on victor x-ray's largest components its wings really from wing tip to wingtip we're looking at about 211 feet so huge wingspan that's about a football pitch better football pitch yeah overseeing the work on the aluminium and carbon fiber wings is shift manager chris morgan obviously they're very sturdy but there's quite a bit of movement isn't there in the actual yeah so i mean if you can see this movement there now you you get a ton of displacement up and down is about 32 feet that's because you don't want a wing to be rigid they need to allow for turbulence and need to allow for airflow how air flows around a wing is crucial to achieving flight and yet incredibly even among experts there are different theories to answer the question how does a plane fly and most people have that question answered with bernoulli's theory a bernoulli's theory suggests that air going over the top of the wing has to travel further than the air underneath because it's got to travel further it speeds up because it speeds up the air particles spread out and diffuse [Music] this results in lower pressure above the wing than the pressure beneath that pressure difference literally pushes the plane into the air but this doesn't explain why planes can fly with symmetrical wings in fact it's the angle of the wing and the amount of air it deflects down that matters because according to newton's third law the air force downwards results in an equal and opposite force upwards onto the underside of the wing at the right speed and angle this is enough to lift the plane into the air in flight victor x-ray's wings are subjected to enormous forces apprentice louis robinson hall has been scouring the surface of this wing to find any damage that may have occurred we found some damage during inspections which the damage is around there where all that is uh pulled away from the structure below it okay so the composite started to come apart defect spotted it can now be repaired it turns out that lewis's engineering passion runs in the blood three generations of my family have worked there so it's just run with the family i suppose yeah and are they are they on shift with you sometimes uh no my dad's on the opposite shift to me okay which is okay uh and my bambi is retired now yeah so but he used to work in here as well lewis next job is on victor x-rays flaps vital components which increase the surface area of the wings allowing aircraft to fly at slow speeds [Music] the only way the crucial hydraulic and backup electrical control systems can be thoroughly checked is to remove the flaps lewis has to control this crane with absolute precision the crane has been set to 0.9 of a ton which is the exact weight of the flap they remove it that's so when the last guy undoes the last bolt the wing doesn't drop to the floor or fly to the ceiling is she off okay slowly but surely the flap is removed from the wing with barely a millimeter of movement up or down let it go it's all the arsenal's alright look at his face he's loving it [Music] during flight air passes over these flaps and wings at hundreds of miles an hour that causes friction and the build-up of static electricity to deal with that there are small attachments known as static wicks if you could see it how would that static look coming off here does it just sort of fizzle out literally that visibility wise it's often very hard to see yeah but you will still get sparky really that will occur yes and sometimes in the high you know electric storms and and certainly um in a lightning strike we will get these like sacrificial they will take a little bit of a battering on average every aircraft is hit by lightning once a year so how does a plane deal with this phenomenon this laboratory at the university of cardiff holds the answer because this is one of the few places in the world where scientists led by phil leichauer have the technology to make lightning of their own it might sound bad doing these lightning tests through planes and things but absolutely everything on an aircraft has to be certified against all the threats it could be posed to it the state-of-the-art laboratory tests new materials as aircraft manufacturers look to find lighter more cost-effective alternatives to the aluminium currently used [Music] so why do planes get hit by lightning the aeroplane seems it's actually in the sky it's a huge metal object it induces the lightning strikes itself because it's the only thing there so how do planes survive to find out we're going to test this aluminium model similar to our own 747. let's uh let's blow it okay you might have the best job in the world sometimes i think so there's a lot of paperwork too though now it's my chance to play god basically when i say fire it's very easy just press fire and fire so as you see the model airplane survived it did look it looks perfectly intact everything and everyone inside a plane is protected by the aluminium fuselage which is a good conductor it allows the electricity to take the path of least resistance along the fuselage and out again what would the passenger feel they might hear a loud thump but that's about it they shouldn't feel anything at all a graphic experiment illustrates the dangers of using a non-conducting material in this case plastic fire which is why all new material combinations are so extensively tested back at the hangar work to strip back the 747 continues [Music] today engineers are about to reveal one of the parts of the plane that the public never sees the nose cone or radome as it's known shields the aircraft's weather radar which needs to be checked for corrosion and it works on the radar principle which is like a complicated echo it fires out radio waves in a very very fine focus it fires a beam out and then listens to that beam coming back which will bounce off any clouds or anything that's up ahead and that information is fired at different angles to allow a huge range of sight which is fed back to the flight deck so the pilot can take whatever action he needs to take victor x-ray is now a week into its overhaul and next its most valuable components are about to be removed for closer examination is a big moment indeed they're actually taking the engine off the wing these things cost about eight million pounds each the last thing you want to have happen is it come crashing to the floor as experienced as he is it's a nervous moment for team leader scott crowl i got started as an apprentice 10 years ago and i've worked more up to team leader but i mean even as a team leader now the amount of knowledge and experience we need to learn is just incredible and i think that's what keeps me going generating over 60 000 pounds of thrust an engine exerts enormous pressure on the mounts that hold them in place it's crucial that engineers remove the engines so they can examine these fixtures for signs of wear the pylon is that big bracket if you like you can see which connects the engine to the wing the engine to the pylon itself has got eight bolts eight volts yeah so just four at the front and forward the back and that's what the boys are undoing and doing out there and doing the forward the eight bolts are crucial in holding the engine in place so each one will be sent to a laboratory and tested for weaknesses there it is yeah these are all gets sent away now ndt's but we'll have a new set going back on ndt non-destructively tested nice maybe x-rays yeah yeah ultrasound ultrasound looking inside yeah for the drop the seven ton engine is supported in a sling attached to the crane it's an impressive operation to make sure this is all rigged up perfectly well but nothing can go wrong yeah you'll just be pushing it is it i mean it's heavy to push or once now it's suspended it's quite funny we're just supporting it um obviously we we try not to with all the work is done by the crane yeah all right so we let that do okay clear come down it's all happening okay scott and his team slowly lower the engine making sure that all of its pipes are disconnected to be honest it seems like the tension is being transferred from the crane into the engineers here you can see them all get more more focused as it slackens off come down again [Music] [Music] i don't think even steel toe caps would uh withstand the force of one of these coming down looking pretty good we're almost there ladies and gentlemen is a wrap so the end of the day scott when you go home you've still got that job satisfaction with you oh definitely i mean you know every day i go home i see my little girl and she says daddy how did your day in work go today and i say honey today daddy for an engine not just any engine and rb211 ah here we go full-on impression now yeah when turning the big fan at the front sucks in air which is then compressed mixed with a mist of fuel and ignited in a combustion chamber this produces a huge continuous blast of energy in the form of hot gases these are directed out of the back of the engine producing some of the engine's thrust [Music] the energy from the combustion is also used to spin the front fan faster sucking more air in this air is directed around the outside of the core and forced out of the rear producing the rest of the engine's thrust the 24 precious titanium fan blades which provide the lion's share of the aircraft's thrust can now be removed and examined by chris thomas and his team for damage is it heavy i mean it's yeah it's not in considerable weight but it's lighter than i thought it would be the titanium blades are hollow to save weight so what exactly are you looking for when you're doing those inspections okay when i inspect the blade i sweat the surface of the blade uh leaving the tray and edge of the blade for any erosion damage okay hey chips or dents yep and corners missing and any uh impact damage you can get on the surface of the blade blades can be damaged by hail or bird strikes all the blades i've got on the blade route here you can see on the market on the blade roof yeah each blade is serialized and they're put in a specific location okay balance the hub so much like on a car wheel say when when you've had something done with your with your car it needs to be balanced so when it's going around at high speed it's not it's exactly the same so if you've had to do some work on one blade you might have to rebalance the whole thing not just that blade that's right yeah wow [Music] fully loaded victor x-ray needs approximately a hundred and twenty thousand horsepower from its four engines to get into the air that's similar to the power of a thousand family cars pulling this plane off the ground it's just in through this hole here just in through that hole this one here that one there and generating that level of thrust is thirsty work wow this this is pretty cramped i'm crawling up into the bowels of the 747 with engineer phil taylor he will spend over two weeks looking for leaks inside the aircraft's labyrinth of fuel tanks so this is it's the main tank we're in the center wing tank which is situated between the two wing sections above you is the cabin area with the cabin seating and you're in the forward mid section of the aircraft basically it holds 65 000 liters 65 000 leads certainly and that is that all in this bit here no this is one compartment of six compartments going towards the rear of the aircraft but there's more than one tank on a plane there's uh eight in all so how much fuel are you looking at there across all of it the fuel quantity for the whole aircraft is 216 000 liters that is massive i mean your average size cars what uh 60 liters 60 liters so approximately three and a half thousand cars you could fill with one jumbo full of aviation fuel victor x-ray is now two weeks into its five-week overhaul and so far it's on schedule engineers have completed over 5000 of the 12 000 jobs that need to be done before the 747 can be classified as air worthy again in the cabin the last remaining floor and wall panels need to be stripped along with a toilet module no no i'm i'm good to go mick right okay i've been roped in to help okay stinked me i did tell you that oh now make on there on a lot of old trains i know that anything that was produced just be dumped out onto the track and from that i think they've developed a sort of urban myth that suggests the same happens on planes is that has that ever been true no it ends up in the athletes which is right down the back of there right four tanks i last met mick removing all the seats and i wondered if working on aircraft for 19 years made him feel more or less comfortable about flying in one i love flying anyway so i mean it doesn't bother me in the slightest i've always loved flying but the wife doesn't like flying at all yeah so i mean we'll get on a we go on holiday to lanzarote something like that and we sit there and the flaps all go down and i'm sorry i'll just grip in your hand that's the flap's going down they should shut up i don't want their name i don't want to know really yeah [Music] in an industry where safety is paramount even a toilet is a highly engineered piece of kit as an electrical component that could cause a fire it has to undergo stringent tests before it's passed fit to fly the tests are carried out at the company's avionics facility outside cardiff here the hundreds of electronic gadgets used on a plane from navigational aids and in-flight entertainment remotes to toilet flushing systems are stripped tested and calibrated by highly skilled engineers like martin jenkins so what happens when you go to the toilet on an airplane right when you actually finish you're what you're doing you press your little button which is on the side of the toilet in the cabin it is there's a there's a massive washing noise that which is what we heard earlier on on the actual rig you get a spray of water from the top and the vacuum gets created in the bowl and sucks sucks it all away above 16 000 feet air pressure outside the plane is considerably lower than inside by opening a small vent the waste pipe and tank are bought to the same low pressure as outside effectively creating a vacuum this means that when a seal on the toilet bowl is opened anything in the bowl is sucked away into the pipes and waste tanks [Music] when you're flying martin when you go to the toilet in the air you must have an ear now for what is the perfect flush that's a good point actually because sometimes you might get an actuator that is actually working but not to the full capacity and as you just said you can pick it up as you're listening to it when the refresh cycle you might not hit it but i probably would yeah and the other guys will work here as well [Music] although it might seem over the top this level of testing is not without good reason [Music] on a flight electrical powers at a premium so even the kettles are tested to make sure they don't use too much electricity and take it away from a more important system [Music] engineer simon orcock is currently checking that these kettles draw the correct current while taking the exact time to reach the precise temperature to make a perfect cup of tea we boil it 83 celsius plus uh plus or minus two celsius the board of tea tasters have decided of say pg tips or whatever it says david says boil a kettle it says hot but not boiling yeah yeah it's amazing even the kettles are over over tested over tested yeah when the 747 flew for the first time over 40 years ago many of these devices being tested here hadn't even been invented as technology has evolved manually controlled cables and pulleys have been replaced by computer-controlled electronic signals transmitted by wires [Music] beneath victor x-ray's passenger compartment is the cargo bay surrounded by the 172 miles of wiring that connect all the planes complex systems just looking around there are miles and miles of wiring here many of these cables flow from the pilot's controls to these vital computers currently being examined by avionics engineer nick jordy the first 747s were designed back in the 60s i presume those wouldn't have had any of this no the racks were built but it had totally different boxes on the box would be much more primitive than they are now so how would what these boxes do now have been done back then a lot of the functions done by these boxes used to be done by the flight engineer that rolls redundant because of these guys there's a thought machine taking over man's job it's now just three weeks until victor x-ray is due to fly again as it's been stripped bare i've been able to see how the aircraft's intricate flight controls work delved inside its complex engines and experienced the impressive mass of its landing gear as it was tested but could the plane's computers i've just seen control all of these without a pilot i'm really interested to see if it could actually fly itself i'm heading down to london to see pilot doug brown who flew victor x-ray to cardiff he's going to demonstrate a 747's autopilot in one of the airline's 8 million pound flight simulators right i'll just give you a chance to fly the airplane manually for a little while as it's as we're climbing away progressing away and then what we'll do is we'll put the autopilot in we'll bring it round and we'll do an automatic approach and auto land onto this runway okay so essentially there are three planes to be thinking about one is pulling back to be able to lift off vertically you've got the steering in the pedals yep to keep yourself down the runway on that plane yeah but then you've also got this horizontal level as well to keep control what does this control all four of the engines so engines one to four forward thrust on there and you can see the engine spool up oh here we go it's actually on there yeah okay now i'm going to put full power on don't turn the stick while you're rotating okay in the middle [Music] that's nice a bit farther i'm going to select the landing gear up it's amazing this is amazing [Music] once up it's a tight 360 degree turn so that we can simulate an automatic landing [Music] can you see the airflow there i can straight ahead yes we're going to let the air the autopilot run through and we'll go right through to nautilus would autopilot be able to do that itself the aircraft will land itself if the pilot has set it up properly to do so fine the autopilot is now controlling the 747s approach to the runway altering the pitch and direction of the aircraft it can also control the level of thrust the autopilot cannot extend the wing flaps which slow the aircraft down or deploy the crucial landing gear 50. no it's going in you see it okay only then can the 747 land itself although the autopilot cannot apply the brakes so now you stick the reverse thrust on we do okay now that a little bit of break it fantastic the 747 is a remarkably intelligent machine but it still requires skilled pilots to fly it and it's the high level of training which is one of the reasons why flying statistically remains so safe another reason is that the airline industry has learned valuable lessons in rare accidents through an iconic component housed in the tail section of a plane here they are two black boxes this on the right the data recorder records with the telemetry of the flight and on the left is the voice recorder which records all the pilots voices [Music] the two black boxers are regularly tested at ba's avionics lab where i met up with engineer john davis this is a black box but as you can see it's not actually black it's painted orange and that's because it's clearly identified in any incident it's a big old tape recorder it is a big tape recorder that's what basically it is as you can see as well the tape is actually surrounded by a two thermal packs which are chalk spring loaders spring loaded as well yeah uh with two thermo packs which are chalk impregnated with water so in the event of a fire that water turns to steam keeps then that tape at a steam temperature okay so it won't destroy the tape and what sort of temperature range is it specified to it should well it should withstand 1 000 degrees c over a 30 minute period of time that's where aviation feel burns so the bit you're opening now inside there that is the the precious cargo of this is the part they're interested in it'll record the last 30 minutes of any flight it may look archaic and new airliners have converted to digital solid-state data storage but tape still does the trick that could contain the most precious of information that will ultimately be fed back to to make sure it never happens again exactly yes which it has many times yeah to comply with comprehensive safety legislation all aircraft must work to strict maintenance schedules including detailed tests every year and a complete overhaul every six years at 14 years of age victor x-ray could still have another 10 years of flying ahead of it but there comes a time when a 747 is just too costly to keep maintaining then it's worth more as spare parts than a complete aircraft this is part of your um flaps part of the kruger flaps okay mark gregory is the boss of air salvage international we're obviously the largest dismantling company in the uk in fact in europe at cotswold airport in gloucestershire mark and his team salvage over 40 aircraft a year these here can we have a closer look at these can yeah they are 747 uh inboard landing gears removed from a 747 400 if he's done huge amount of landings then the value of that is kind of dropping but i think this has done quite a lot of landings but it's still you know still not cheap roughly how much then you're probably looking at about 300 000 for a set landing gears like this on a 747 mark will salvage up to 1200 parts which will eventually be sold to airlines around the world precision electronics means a second hand coffee maker could fetch up to 3 000 pounds even a simple bowl for the toilet could sell for as much as 500 pounds these are the front screens off the 747 they've got very high value and i would say probably around about 30 000 well each for each screen yeah because these ones here are obviously they're heated the heated elements running through them i think there are gold heating elements that go through them okay so in here now you've got so there's they're very very thick they're really thick um screens they're very they're laminated as well you can just see the elements see the elements in there um a bit like your car heated front screen as well that hits home yeah the the value of the whole industry you know yeah it's it's massive actually massive 80 percent of the salvage value of an aircraft comes from its engines there's a 737 engine this has probably got a resale value of about 1.2 million i suppose wow and going back the bigger engines at the back there a little bit more once all the valuable parts of the 747 have been removed what's left of the aluminium shell will be tackled and after almost three weeks victor x-ray is now at a similar stage of its overhaul 18 days ago this plane was flying passengers around the world and today what it looks like inside is a far cry from what it would have been then in this skeletal state there are signs of the 747s evolution we're right at the very front of the aircraft here and above us is the flight deck and just looking around even in a plane as modern as a 747 it's surprising to see how much mechanical equipment there is as well as obviously all the electronics victor x-ray still uses the jumbo's original cable and pulley system to control some of the aircraft's most important functions including the landing gear doors and the rudder and then finally right at the back here hopefully yep you see the cables heading off through the cabin and off to the rudder keeping it mechanical keeping it simple ah the flight deck looks a lot different now without the seats and all the flight instruments the cardiff team now have a tight deadline to turn victor x-ray back into a fully working plane it's booked to go back into service in just over two weeks on the same day the complex process is due to [Music] finish but when a 747 has come to the end of its working life like this one at cotswold airport there's no turning back for mark gregory and his salvage team we've removed over 130 tons of equipment and all the left wooden is now now 100 tons of aircraft which has got very little value because the only value there is the metal at this point the final part of the demolition process can begin so we'll start we'll take the tail off first chew the towel and then we'll work forward and the outboard of the wings into the fuselage [Music] and then through the rest of the body then it doesn't take very long it's about three days to do a 747. it really is all the guts and the veins and everything just being pulled out of the whole machine look at that very soon this 747 is nothing more than a heap of scrap metal so this is 200 million pounds worth of plane reduced to probably the most expensive pile of scrap i've ever seen in my life only a few recognizable fragments of the aircraft remain so this is a leading edge and this is um a salomon there you go you see it here yeah it's thin but pretty well i mean it takes some battery though doesn't it yeah that's pretty durable then as the wing moves back it doesn't need to be as um doesn't need to be as strong so they make it out of this lightweight stuff engineering being led by nature isn't it honeycomb look at this though you can i mean you can see the thickness that's so thin it's like that [Music] some 747 flight decks are spared demolition to be used as the shell in the construction of flight simulators wow oh yeah this is a bit different it's like a relic isn't it look at that this is proper kind of aviation history how it all used to be all these controls here is where flight engineer would have sat when you needed one obviously on victor x-ray that's that's gone now the remaining carcass of a 747 like this still has a recycling value worth up to 35 000 pounds [Music] and although it's no longer pure enough to be used again in aircraft construction as recycled aluminium it does get to live another day once i've separated out the aluminium it'll be sent away smelted down and recycled meaning what was once a fuselage of a 747 could be your next fizzy drink or even the frame of a bicycle [Music] we're on our way back to cardiff where victor x-ray should now have been given a new lease of life last time last time indeed it's heading out tomorrow evening it's due to head back into service there it is victor x-ray completely different it's all back in [Music] it does smell new it does smell new last time i was here this was all completely open yeah it's all on again the screens are running good since arriving five weeks ago engineers have replaced over 5000 separate parts including 11 brand new toilets 386 square meters of new carpet has been fitted along with 285 refurbished seats [Music] and there are 14 brand new first class seats for passengers paying upwards of 5000 pounds of flight for the luxury wow oh wow hey oh it's mad to think it does all this and it flies in just over 24 hours time these seats should be occupied by paying customers on route to south america so now for the first time in five weeks victor x-ray is towed from a hangar for the final critical tests that need to be carried out to ensure all the parts of the aircraft including its four engines are working [Music] for hugh gibbs this is the only occasion when an engineer gets to power up a 747 for real [Music] so will we be moving anywhere when you put it up to almost maximum thrust no no we've got the brakes on and uh but we can't do more than uh one engine at full power at a time we have to do them one at a time really so if you have all four you we'd be taking off well taken off through the middle of cardiff airport yeah request permission to carry out the high power ground run [Music] okay going up on one and four [Music] the sensation of being here right now is kind of what you get when you hit turbulence mid-flight but yet we're here on the runway sat outside cardiff airport it's just awesome the power of these things that was a brilliant fun experience for me but from a technical perspective how did it go all went well we had no problems at all uh got the high power it was lovely and smooth and it passed all the tests that we needed to do so and just running those engines up to throttle like that get any less exciting any time no i've been doing it for about five years now i still love it [Music] the following day and on time victor x-ray is ready to bid farewell to cardiff for the engineers this is the moment when all the hard work pays off quite rewarding you know uh job ownership you know especially if you've been on it from start to finish and you think you look back i've done that works and uh well when you see it barreling down the the runway as well 140 150 knots do you think i did then boxer you know i've been in the industry of 20 years and you'll never lose that pride and that feeling inside that you know you've been part of producing that product and keeping it safe and obviously knowing that when the aircraft returns to heathrow the customer is then sitting on that aircraft and you know you've done your job well after five weeks over thirty thousand working hours and twelve thousand separate jobs victor x-ray is ready once again to take to the skies [Music] and for the engineering team who have painstakingly stripped the aircraft down and built it back up again there's the satisfaction of knowing it works [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] this is the indefatigable lima platform it's the last remaining offshore rig in one of britain's most productive gas fields made up of two and a half thousand tons of steel and almost 15 miles of pipe work it's brought over a million cubic meters of gas up from deep below the sea for almost 40 years it's kept us warm supplying gas to 5 million homes we were the young pioneers in those days we were the ones bringing oil and gas to the uk it was exciting now this giant is about to be demolished it's going to be an immense engineering challenge you just keep watching it and your heart's blowing diamond coated wires will attack two-inch thick steel it allows the machine to just keep cutting and slicing [Music] gas axes burning at three and a half thousand degrees centigrade will bring it to its knees it's an emotional time for the men who put her up the north sea tigers that's 40 years of my life now gone taking her down will require remarkable technical skills and will provide a unique chance to see right inside this enormous installation okay can we get that hook reset please this is engineering giants lima was at the heart of the indefatigable gas field which was discovered in the 1960s 70 miles off the norfolk coast now the gas has run out and it's being decommissioned the whole project will cost one and a half billion pounds and involve the expertise of more than a thousand engineers removing every last trace of lima will take nine months i'm rob bell i'm a mechanical engineer and i've always loved to get my hands on complex machines to discover how they work i'm tom riddlesworth i'm a trained electrical engineer with a passion for big machines as lima makes her last journey from the north sea back to british soil we'll be taking you through every critical stage of the engineering process and as she's torn apart we'll uncover the secrets of how one of the world's biggest machines works few people know lima's secrets as well as austin hand he worked on her construction at lower soft almost 40 years ago it started in middlesbrough where it was it already slipped on schedule so shell decided to bring it from middlesbrough down here to finish it off right right across here just on a barge moored against the keysight yeah austin's come to meet two other lima veterans bill lindsey and mick needham they haven't seen each other in over 20 years it's been a long time ah how you doing i'd like to say we haven't changed much but i'm doing great really yeah probably the first time i've ever come across you was on lima that's right you know who i am and you were the main man [Laughter] for me what's quite it's quite special is that you guys were the pioneers really of uh north sea gas and oil exploration and getting the getting the platforms out there it's exciting but it's a big learning curve as well for all of us we were only in lads i joined shell in 1971 as a 22 year old having worked in power stations and didn't even know what an offshore platform looked like yeah six years or five years later i'm building them yeah in them days the southern north sea was quite a family unit we didn't have too many people coming in as like international it was mainly local lads and they kind of all stuck together right and i think that's these days changed i mean it's your friends and family you weren't necessarily working in around the gas and oil industry the stories you must have been coming home with every week there must have just been what was also difficult for the families because if you're working in a shop or a factory they've got a perception of what it looks like but out there they had no idea what it was like i know my older skill was only about four then and i had to bring pictures home of a bed and a table with food on it and she was happy then she just thought i was working in the sea mcneedham's involvement with lima started when she was built my relationship with lima started in 1976 which entailed putting three new platforms in and the first one was in de lima more than 30 years later mick finds himself back out in the north sea working on lima again at the very heart of the decommissioning process i got a phone call saying we need a company rep on board the heavily fastest stanislav ud and taking out the indie platforms would i be interested and i said two right i would the challenge of working at c makes the complex decommissioning process more costly more difficult and more dangerous massive heavy lifting vessel the stanislav udin weighing almost 25 000 tons has moored up against lima this mobile demolition yard costs half a million pounds to hire per day and will be home to the 120 engineers who'll harvest lemur from the sea their first major job is to plug the wells and sever the gas conductors the lima platform had six wells each tapping into a separate section of the gas reservoir two miles under the sea the only way to bore that deep is brace the well in sections as it's drilled each time a smaller pipe is passed down and the joint sealed with concrete these are known as conductors now lima's wells have been plugged in four places with cement and the conductors are ready to be cut you end up with pipes within pipes within pipes so you've got concentric rings of pipes once the conductors have been cut you will actually see something that's like a dart board effect where you've got concentric circles within each other with concrete between them cutting through these materials would be a challenge on land but this surgery needs to be carried out 30 meters under the surface of a stormy north sea mateo mosca helped develop an ingenious cutting solution one of the many methods used in north sea decommissioning so what have we got on there on this wire which is uh just a steel strand wire you got embedded these uh diamond bits these elements which are uh covered with the synthetic diamond okay and the wire is constructed as an endless loop a continuous endless loop and it grinds its way through yes and gives a good finishing it doesn't alter the the physical structure of the metal locally it doesn't uh heat it so can we actually see this cut through yes that's what it's made for so let's go back out in the north sea this process is happening 30 meters below the surface of the water these cameras help guide divers as they maneuver the diamond wire cutter into place let's get cutting the amount of friction created by the cutter can heat up the steel so much that it begins to warp so it has to be cooled by water the saw working out on the indy field has the cold north sea to do the job but for this demonstration here on land cold water must be sprayed on to dissipate the heat i mean the thing for me which really drives home this is quite a clever piece of kit or you've got thousands of tons compressing down and this cutter allows you to cut across that without it getting jammed a jam deep underwater would hold proceedings and cost tens of thousands of pounds to put right this because it cuts all the way around that wire not just forwards but also above and beneath it it allows the machine to just keep cutting and slicing right the way through it's really impressive cut on lima with the wells plugged and the conductors cut they'll be able to move on to a bigger challenge removing the two and a half thousand ton platform this scrapping represents the end of an era the north sea veterans who put lemur up know how tough it will be 34 years ago as a young man austin hand helped to bring it into the world now he's in charge of decommissioning on one of the north sea's biggest projects is this you here that that's me and my boss gordon box who was the guy who actually recruited me into shell i've been involved in that sense for 40 years either design and construct and uh initially my first sort of foray into the offshore business was uh in de lima that's lemur in the background that's it it parked in the in the key side in low soft after we'd brought it down from middlesbrough so that was us beginning to get it ready to go the platform has to withstand 15 meter high waves and winds of up to 100 miles an hour the legs or jacket is all important fixing lima to the seabed removing it is going to be a mammoth task and will require as much engineering ingenuity as went into building her so the jacket's basically a frame and and you place it on the seabed then you put piles in like pinning it and you drive the piles with a big hammer into the seabed that is a piling hammer so it's about 60 feet high now above all these exciting things to do one of my jobs was to stand out all night with a clicker counting the number of blows of the piling hammer you got all the good jazz lima's removal from the north sea will involve taking away not just the jacket but the piles as well and before that happens i want to understand exactly how she was constructed and secured out at sea i've got to show you how it works though okay right so obviously on lima this has done a hell of a lot further out at sea how do they actually get it out they built this on land the jacket yeah they take it out on a massive barge though but the jacket is basically only there as a guide for the piles and these are what takes the whole force of the top side so they go slot down into each of the legs so on lima these piles were being driven 90 foot into the seabed must be a very noisy job it is a very noisy job that's why they do it so far out at sea so they don't disturb anyone that is going nowhere with the legs firmly embedded the final part of the construction was to add the top side now 40 is on removing that topside is about to be the biggest test so far for lima's decommissioning team weighing in at 1 350 tons this is the heart of the rig where the crew lived and worked processing the gas before piping it to shore cutting it off the legs will be an enormous challenge requiring knowledge skill and nerves of steel the problem is how do you cut across the legs but still ensure the platform stays in place until craned off if for some reason we had a storm blow up and we just did a straight cut potentially the wind and the weather could vibrate the top size and start to move the top sides and if it's just on a flat surface it could start to move and potentially the last thing i want to do is have to go fishing to get the top sides onto sea that lives could be at stake if they get it wrong and so a simple but ingenious solution is integrated into how they sever the legs the cuts are shaped like castle ramparts these cuts are absolutely genius and crucial to the whole decommissioning process having made the cut through the jacket the top side's resting on that what the cassellations do gives the whole thing a lot more structural integrity but when you do need it to be lifted the crane comes in and it's taken up genius the final castellated cuts are made to lima's legs leaving her 1300 ton top side precariously balanced on top the worst thing that could happen at this stage is a storm the castellations could be brutally put to the test [Music] but the morning sun reveals that lima's top side is still in place now it faces a new test this part of the operation is incredibly dangerous it uses a floating crane that can lift two and a half thousand tons that's as much as the blackpool towerways which is why it costs almost half a million pounds to hire every day then in order to float more than two thousand tons of steel back to land a barge is needed this one is as big as a football pitch at this moment there's only one thought running through mick's mind is it going to be level the entire lift is based on complex calculations which allow the crane to ballast itself against lima's weight but these calculations are estimates so you're doing a theoretical model of not only the top side's weight but where the center of gravity of that topsides is and they're about to find out how close to the truth they are the platform is successfully lifted off its legs for the first time in 30 years [Music] more than a thousand tons of steel are maneuvered with precision safely onto the barge with stage one complete the engineers will turn their attention to the legs these are embedded deep into the bedrock and must be cut off below the surface of the seabed the task is tricky and will require an even more ingenious solution but as preparation for lima to leave the indefatigable gas field continues i want to find out more about why she ended up there in the first place for geologist john underhill gas and oil exploration is a lifetime's work i have this strange belief that under the sea when you go drilling through oil there exists pools of oil pockets of gas large you know sealed off sections that we drill and tap into and then it all comes releasing now is that true well it's a proper myth really that we we float on a reservoir of oil in reality it's solid rock with what's called pore space between it so air pockets that could be filled with gas or with oil these air pockets less than a millimeter in size fill up with gas over millions of years the pores make this kind of rock soft and easy to drill so soft you can even feel it i'm moving grains of sand because they're coming apart and they're on my fingers so that's breaking apart that is a porous rock the very same rock formation that makes up lemurs gas field off the norfolk coast travels the length of england and emerges on land here at tynemouth in the northeast this is a core from the sudden or sea from the indie field can i hold this this precious ingot and from a sample like this once it goes into the hands of the geologist and it's tested for all its um components you can then say how how rich it is in oil or gas or we can calculate how much gas is in the indie field for example from this and from the mapping of the seismic data geologists calculated that the indie field contained 5.6 trillion cubic feet of gas enough to fill nearly 2 million wembley stadiums under the right conditions gas is formed from the remains of organic matter compressed under rock for millions of years this layer is known as the carboniferous layer or source rock above this porous rock holds the gas like water in a sponge in the gaps between its grains finally a layer of hard non-porous rock known as the sealing layer forms a cap locking in all the gas until someone drills a well are two types of source rock one is oil prone and comes from either marine sediments or lake sediments the other type is from woody material coal that gives a gas-prone source rock so it's marine life that gives us oil and then land life that gives us gas primarily yes and here in the cliff face below tymoth priory we can see how the source rock lies beneath the ceiling layer identical to that found in the indie field at the base we've got the the carboniferous which is the the source rock level above that we have the reservoir unit the yellow sands and above that right at the top of the cliff the recess at the top of the cliff is the ceiling unit which keeps the gas in the in the reservoir underneath the north sea and all three are exposed here uh in this cliff line out in the north sea with lima's 1300 ton topside removed the next big challenge is to sever the 10 story high 1085 ton legs from the seabed all trace of lima must be removed to satisfy a so-called clean sea policy triggered by a dramatic event in the north sea 17 years ago [Music] the brent spa was a gigantic oil storage facility from which oil tankers transported the oil to shore by 1995 a pipeline had been installed so it was no longer needed shell had a plan to dump it by towing it into the atlantic and sinking it greenpeace saw this as a potential environmental disaster so they sailed out and took control of the spa a protest that would make international news in a blaze of bad publicity shell reversed their decision and instead towed it to shore to be recycled on land and put the rest of the brentfield decommissioning on ice 17 years later the process has restarted an austin hand who began his offshore career building lima is in charge did that kind of act as a precedence for now how all the fields and the platforms to decommission we thought it was a reasonable and logical thing to do to take it out to sea two and a half miles down in the atlantic and place it in in this kind of valley on the seabed we didn't do a very good job of explaining that so basically that resulted in the oslo paris convention of 1998 that said roughly speaking you put them there you take them away a clean seas policy and that's what greenpeace drove for and that's what they succeeded in getting there's so much involved in this that the cost of decommissioning just must be enormous austin's estimate austin's view 100 billion dollars of decommissioning in the uk there are those that would say i don't believe you austin you've overstated it we'll see who's right in the end [Music] because of the clean seas policy out in the north sea the lemur engineers now face a really difficult challenge cutting the legs of the jacket to remove it from the seabed in a way that leaves no trace that it was ever there to achieve this the jacket legs must be cut off three meters below the seabed this means the only way to cut the legs is to sever them from the inside it's a job that demands a very special type of cutter as world expert george jack explains there's no blade no flame just water and grit is it the sea water that you're using there as you yeah we took filter sea water and through our pumps yeah pump take up the high pressure and then introduce the abrasive to it as well yeah that's actual garnet we introduced to the water well that's pretty hard stuff is it yeah yeah garnet is a dark red silicon-based mineral although large crystals are used in jewellery some types possess strong atomic bonds which make them very hard and ideal as industrial abrasives if you don't have that in your water it's not there's not enough friction to cut through the actual metal okay george is about to demonstrate to me the power of cutting with water and garnets this is a control room this is where we control the water pressure the grip monitor okay so what pressure we're at here at the moment just now we're setting it just at six thousand psi okay that's three to four hundred times greater than your typical water supply at home the price is on yep but you're introducing the grit into the system the pressure comes up there we go look at that you'll know when as soon as it starts coming through you'll see the water coming underneath no now you can see it's just gone through [Applause] so that's that's 50 millimeters of solid steel that's just 15 millimeters yeah so compared to say a high pressure jet hose that you might get for your washing your car or doing your patio from the hardware store yeah if you tried to do that with this thing you'd probably do more damage than good right oh yeah the pressure we have barely read on one of these gauges the first line on that got my thousands i'm not quite sure what kind of cut i'm expecting is it going to be a clean car is it going to be quite jagged i don't know paul daniels debbie mcgee he's gone right the way through so this is not for domestic use not for diversity i'm afraid the lemur engineers are ready for the high pressure water cutter with the top side removed they're able to lower it down right inside the legs in theory if the severance isn't complete the crane could pull the stanislavudin over in practice fail-safe mechanisms would prevail but an incomplete severance could still cost millions we control it from the top side using our hydraulics and everything okay and it'll cut do a 360 degrees sub sea just three meters below the seabed before they begin the cutting every precaution must be taken the system is pressurized to six thousand pounds per square inch any leak or breach could be deadly an exclusion zone around the cutter is strictly enforced because we've got high pressure hoses running across the deck if you put your hand up like that you're not going to have anything left calculations estimate that the 360 degree cut of each leg should take 75 minutes all mick can do now is time it and help once the allotted time has been given to each leg special slings are attached so all the slings are it's they're not just something you get off the shelf all these slings are engineered and designed and built to the lens required now the crane must ballast itself against an unknown payload up to 300 tons of extra weight in marine life could have accumulated over four decades making the jacket 1400 tons as heavy as seven jumbo jets all this makes the calculations for the stability of the crane more and more difficult puts the ballasting power of the stanislav udin yet further to the test and their stability in more jeopardy and then the big tense moment for everybody because we are now going to start lifting jacket but there's one thing we can't do we can't actually 100 guarantee their cut bike when they have a look at them you hear the crane driver he starts taking that the weight on the crane 1200 1400 tons somewhere in that region and if he gets to 1400 turn and then he starts saying i'm at 14.50 now you're thinking i hope this is going to move shortly and your heart's probably going thump thump and all of a sudden it just seems to go oh and it's a great cider and it's a great relief [Music] after the final lift engineers work through the night to fasten lima safely to the barge upon which she'll make her final journey and that was it it was it was an end of an era for not only myself but for so many people that have worked on the indie field throughout the last 40 years in the dead of night she leaves the indie field behind forever and sets off on the 200 mile journey home to the north east mick's relationship with lima has finally come to an end india produced for so long brought lots of people work and more than that lots of great friends and happy memories i think that's what stick i'm no joking help yeah idea i can't believe it excuse me but for lima this marks the start of the next phase of deconstruction as dawn breaks over the horizon lima arrives at the mouth of the river tine from here she'll be taken to the famous swan hunter shipyard for demolition it's amazing to think something like lima how important that was to us we just don't really consider that at all really it's delivering all that gas to our homes keeping us warm cooking our food well the indie field actually produced enough gas in its lifetime to power the uk for a year and a half just in one gas field yeah at the swan hunter shipyard they must wait for the tide to be just the right height so the barge is level with a key only then can the painstaking process of sliding over 2 000 tons of steel off the barge onto land begin you won't see one of them come over every day do you four remotely controlled bogeys with a total of 56 axles each capable of supporting 36 tons of weight fantastic maneuver lima into her final resting place now the next chapter in her story is about to begin ivan rayne is jordy born and bread and there's another person whose relationship with lima and her sister platforms goes back to their construction in the 1970s but you didn't have to wear all this kind of stuff back in the 70s did you yeah we did but once you got offshore have you ever mentioned the word safety you're on the next holy cop the home again he too has come a complete circle he's now here to oversee the demolition and recycling of lima all these pipes and valves and kind of meats everything we can see around so we're dedicated to getting that gas out of here the main function of this platform is to gather gas from the seabed and the gas will be brought up through six pipes brought into this system here and then redirected to another complex where it is collected and then it's sent to uk mainland for refinement and then it gets redistributed throughout the uk and it comes into your house and that's what you use for cooking your roast beef on the sun for violia's recycling team in charge of the demolition this is no ordinary takedown job so this has been out in the north sea for 40 years where do you start in taking it all apart and recycling it the holy deck will be cut off and pulled over and then they'll start dismantling it section by section once that's flattened they'll start cutting it up into very manageable pieces and the smaller the pieces the better value they get for recycling for transport off the safe all right so now we're talking money typically you know what can we looking at for recycling this whole platform could be looking anything from 180 to 200 000 pounds wow scrap volume after 40 years of service providing gas to millions of people and jobs and even a home to hundreds of north sea tigers lima is finally about to be brought to her knees first her infrastructure is weakened by strategic cuts next it's time for the excavators to really get to work steer wires are attached to the heli deck and the machines go into reverse this red accommodation module is next for demolition its fixings to lima's frame have been severed and the excavators are standing by [Music] mcubit spent four years living and working on lima as an electrical engineer it's almost 19 years to the day since he last saw her that's incredible it's like a bomb bomb has hit the place it fed it's bordering on unrecognizable i don't want to um pull any more emotional punches on you mick but i think that is your old bedroom that red tin shack over there i am afraid to have spent several in effect the equivalent to two years worth so it's somewhat four years half on half off that's right yes some 700 nights spent in that little tin box so we've had to walk into your accommodation blockmate this is a home sweet home home sweet home looks fairly devastating to me it's been [Music] really had the insides ripped out so this was the living area then mick was it this is where you pass the time well prior to um the introduction of satellite television we used to show films that were hiding by the company your own little blockbuster yeah so this must have been pretty cramped how many people lived in here this was accommodation for eight people two two lots of bunks um the shower for all four was in here that's the shower tray with a wash basin placed just here um shower wash basin and that was it that was your emergency exit so like it's the middle of the night you're sleeping you're comfortable abode and there's an emergency alarm the worst case scenario what what's the order of service three offs the three offs being block off where you would block in all the wells stop the gas coming onto the platform you would then vent off what's the third off you just off follow me okay quickly mick it's an emergency situation for mixed lima colleagues reunited in lower soft for the first time in over 20 years all that's left are photos and shared memories of their incredible offshore lives that's me on lima how many times would you have been offshore at that stage probably not many yeah they used to fish than me tony sure there is some entertainment to be had made our own entertainment what was the food supplies like i mean did you eat well it very well but you would have a choice of a fillet steak a bit of fish that's a decent spread though christmas crackers exclusive devices offshore if you had a good chef you had a good platform and you had a productive platform that's one thing i really take away from this whole process is it isn't just the hardware it isn't just all the steel and everything it's the family of all the people who've built it worked on it how does it feel now that that that particular field and lima platform's not there anymore is it does it kind of sit with you does it rest with you or when you're finished you think you know that's 40 years of my life yeah you know now now gone you just realized i hold your buddy again back at the swan hunter shipyard another relic of the glory days of the north sea has been uncovered a stark reminder of just how treacherous it can be so this looks like a horror story mick but i believe it was just a heli deck when they removed it it smashed into the front there but this is your survival left isn't it yes this was the uh brooker capsule as it was known on the platform um awful thing to steer being circular and an awful thing to ride in were you the captain i have been uh done the coxswain's training on here and i've been to sea with guys who are happily throwing up and it is not the best place to be even with a dozen guys in when you've got a couple of them thrown up into their hard hat i'm hoping that years of training means that my lima veterans have grown stronger stomachs because i'm about to get my first taste of the brooker pod experience and this is exactly the kind of one you had up on lima is it absolutely identical identical luxurious was it that's how we became friends [Laughter] pods like these have safely evacuated more than 2 000 people in over 60 incidents around the world since lima was built so how long since you guys have been in one of these for me it would have been 1978 in this particular time i've been given the job of releasing the capsule and it's fair to say that the speed of the response takes me by surprise all right we're off they were designed for the gulf of mexico but the bobbing donut was no match for the waves and currents of an undulating north sea the survival pods still vital for an industry which has claimed hundreds of lives and now usually boat shaped i'm being shown the ropes by nick goldspink who's been teaching north sea tigers how to navigate these pods since 1989. i mean we're moving around like a boat but still this this round shape seems like a very odd design for a boat to me yeah it's partly to do with strength and it's partly to do with ease of operation the traditional style of lifeboat has got a cable at the front and the back okay and there's a chance that that can hang up there is no chance and no possibility that with this shape of boat obviously um there is a compromise to the shape and that is that they do bob around like a cork round how do you even steer this thing yeah well that that is more difficult than a traditional life boot shape but the advantage of that is they're very maneuverable but she steered basically from the tiller here which again is unusual in a lifeboat to steer a boat from the front if you were to evacuate how long would you be able to survive in a craft like this a fairly long walk would be the answer to that i mean there's enough water and food for a week i would not want to be stuck in here for a week with 27 other people you'd get to know them fairly well you were to become quite an intimate an intimate team [Music] so how was that gents bring back a few a few memories yep after you say 20 years on i never thought it'd be back in one of them back on tyneside there's nothing ship shaped about lima which has been slowly cut down girded by girder making it no longer possible to trace the pathway that gas would have taken snaking through miles of lima's pipe work from under the sea to our kitchen hubs so to solve the mystery of how she worked i'm going to see an offshore platform in action and trace the fossil fuel route a little bit he's never been on a helicopter thanks to gas and oil aberdeen heliport is europe's busiest ferrying almost half a million passengers offshore every year across the north sea more than a hundred lives have been lost since air transfers began which is why every possible safety technique is used in the event of the helicopter ditching this suit will increase my survival time in the freezing north sea from just minutes to about seven hours but i hope i don't have to put it to the test after an hour of seeing nothing but sea a platform comes into view [Music] 100 miles offshore from aberdeen in the northern north sea this is nelson which produces both gas and oil the fossil fuels pathway on nelson is very similar to lima's gas pathway so i'm going to track the route from under the sea to our homes and explore how current technology works while lima had six wells nelson has drilled 28. nelson's manager nick mccloud is going to show me the drill floor okay wow pretty impressive our wells here could go down as far as 20 000 feet 20 000 feet and eventually we get down to what's called the pay zone which is the area yeah the peso that's where the money is yeah that's where the oil and gas is okay what happens then it caught spurts up doesn't it everyone cheers in the old days hopefully not these days the first crucial stage for the fuel that emerges is the well bay everything's moving about as juddering really noisy absolutely unbelievable it's unbelievable to consider that they've made this side production engineer murdo mcdonald is here to explain the first step of the fossil fuels it's got a lot of pathway in here which involves something known in the trade as a christmas tree why is it actually called the christmas tree maybe it's because they look like they've got branches coming off them you've got all the gear just hanging off if you've got quite an imagination yeah you've got quite a strong two weeks off yeah when a well's drilled the raw fuel comes up the conductors into the well bay on lemur this was gas on nelson it's gas and oil here the christmas trees large assemblies of valves and gauges help control the flow of oil and gas entering the platform i'm ready for my first offshore job five turns oh one two three four five turns what have i done it's just joking about just close the choking five percent which has restricted the oil flow coming up absolutely stage two of the pathway is all about separating what emerges from the well into its constituent parts like a science fiction film when a well is drilled oil comes up the conductors into the well bay but it's not pure oil it's a mixture of oil gas and water in order to extract the valuable oil and collect the gas the whole mixture is sent to one of the most important devices on the platform the separator i've made a model of nelson separator to explain to rob how it works it's bafflingly simple we have here a bucket which to the casual observer appears to be generic grand cola mixed with vegetable oil which is actually exactly the same as oil water and gas right that's what's coming up from the bottom of the sea so we've got a pump but normally that's got enough pressure to be forcing itself up exactly that would be pushed up under its own steam yeah so what you do you separate them out the gas will naturally flow off to the top yep lighter than both of them so that will normally be tapped and off into wherever else it taps and processed yet water is heavier than oil so this weir is very important because the oil floats on the water okay you see that easily here so the brown stuff is the water and the creamy stuff is your oil exactly so because the oil is floating on the water it flows over the top of this wheel creating this secondary chamber here which is pretty much all oil so coming out of here you get pure oil coming out of the bottom of this section you get flat cola or water yeah coming out the top gas yes this separation stage of the fossil fuels pathway is vitally important because it tells the energy company how much gas and oil they're producing to do this every day each well is taken out of production and diverted into the test separator you too how's it going in the control room pete o'connor is monitoring the results so that's the production valve there the diverter valve which is open that's the test one which is shut so by putting it into the test separator it lets us know how the well is performing how much oil it's producing how much water and how much gas it's producing all our wells now are starting to water out there all over 80 water that didn't used to be the case nope no they all gradually they gradually decline in oil production so the test separator is actually uh testing the the mix of oil to gas to water for each individual well yeah we have a spot rate there which at the moment can tell you we're doing 19 357 barrels near enough today at the moment wow at that rate nelson produces oil worth around one and a half million pounds a day not a bad return the third and final stage of the fossil fuels pathway is exporting it water is cleaned and pumped overboard oil is cleaned and then pumped down the export pipeline to shore but it's not all over for the gas some is exported to gas terminals excess is burnt off on the iconic flare stack but most of it is diverted to something known as the gas lift to do an important job because of the weight of the ocean on this trapped reservoir of hydrocarbons yeah it's all under pressure which is kind of like this so the moment the drill pierces it wow you've got the oil the oil comes out now obviously quite soon it loses pressure so once they've been tapping the oil off so it becomes like the field becomes flat yes exactly it becomes flat it becomes devoid of pressure yeah so what you do instead of pumping it up yeah you push gas down into the reservoir which makes the oil light because it's got gas in it which then sends it back up you basically make the world's biggest sodastream the gas collected from the separator is compressed re-pressurized and then re-injected back down the well via the christmas tree forcing more precious oil up the force required to do this is huge on the platform murdo shows me where they get it from it's a gas compressor which is essentially a jet engine and it's one of the noisiest things i've ever experienced the engine drives the third turbine gas compressor the gas compressor takes the pressure from five bar to the production separator takes it all the way up to 147 bar that's 147 times atmospheric pressure [Applause] [Applause] but while nelson's conductors are still full of north sea gas lima's conductors now lie severed from the rest of the platform on the keysight at the swan hunter yard near newcastle and demolishing them is going to be a feat in itself because of the way the wells are drilled and constructed they end up with pipes within pipes within pipes all sealed with thick layers of cement turning this into small pieces of scrap metal requires a process known as bombing first the gas axe is used to cut along both sides of the long steel conductor then to get at the inner pipes the excavator steps in once it's made short work of the concrete the inner steel pipes are revealed and the process starts all over again with over a third of a kilometer of conductors to scrap it's a lengthy process meanwhile on the other side of the yard only lima's legs or jacket as it's known still remain built from over a thousand tons of high-grade steel it must be broken up into small chunks to be recycled the first stage is to bring the structure to its knees strategic cuts must be made so the legs collapse neatly but it's a dangerous job as soon as a cut is made the platform is weakened and may fall at any time so are you guys responsible for felling the legs yes we are yeah yeah i wouldn't like to be the uh the guy who does the final cut who's in charge of that whoever wants to do it the back side gets a bit twitchy when they're cutting the final in the final i think it was me at the moment the axe is finished i'd be turning and running do you actually no no there's no need to run in a carefully controlled and calculated procedure tow lines attached to the top of the jacket will be used to pull it over this is the first time this method has been attempted anywhere in the world we attach two ropes either side of the jacket and a safety rope to the very back of the jacket just to stop the bike legs toppling the wrong way the engineers have put down a bed of earth for the legs to collapse onto to cushion the impact we've got two lines haven't they uh yeah two pulling links these guys will take the tension up on nowhere just give it a little tug it's quite exciting just the anticipation of it before it's going to come down everything clear yeah don't let anything in now because we're about ready if the 30 meter high back legs were to fall in the wrong direction they could land on a factory behind the shipyard still excited to see these come down i love it brilliant [Music] [Music] well done brilliant that was awesome congratulations and that's the way to do it the demolition of this jacket for recycling is the final act in the scrapping of the lima platform although veteran lima engineer austin hand is working in decommissioning he has not seen lima the platform he cut his teeth on for 20 years well there she is now wow i'm so used to building things so to see it dismantled and in pieces it's just so you're probably quite used to it in this condition in a second i can still see the module yeah just on the different curve of its life yeah now that really reminds me of going on and off that barge for months yeah to get to get it completed just walking over a gangplank and working 12 14-hour days every day but it was fun and exciting so yeah that gives me a bit of a buzz you know we were the young pioneers in those days we were the ones bringing oil and gas to the uk it was exciting good memories i've seen austin as this process has unfolded i've seen the huge machine of lima being reduced to small piles of steel rubble and i was surprised to see so much timber on show can you tell me a bit about this well they used to say in my day that the rigs were made of wood and the men were made of steel but that's not actually true so what this was we covered the main steel deck with this timber so that when you were lifting stuff off supply boats and landing it on the platform you had some absorption material that avoided sort of damaging the decor or even the container so all this timber here was was to provide you with a huge cushioned area to protect the whole thing like a massive chopping board in a way absolutely yeah this steel tubing once formed the jacket that supported the top side it's now been broken up into sections ready to be recycled [Music] but to the expert eye even these fragments reveal the challenges of these early pioneering designs in the 70s sometimes the quality wasn't great so this is a good example here now this is a very tough angle for a welder to get in at these points right down in there exactly so you know in an ideal world that brace would have been at a less of an angle but very often the designers just wanted it to be structurally robust and then when it arrived for us to deal with it in the construction yard think wow why did they do that yes so on on paper mathematically it made it perfect exactly but sometimes it wasn't constructable um but again this was a learning process that would feed that back in to the next jacket and say can we do this slightly differently and that's how we evolved the industry getting better and better uh and making it easier to be sure these wells would sound and solid all these things had to be considered even with a relatively simple structure like a jacket for the final time the excavators pull on lima's infrastructure to bring down her last story all the legs gonna go there [Music] it's very very sad to see that something that you built when you are a 25 year old you're pulling it a bit when you're a 59 year old and it just shows your time moves on and nothing starts lima is now unrecognizable just heaps of rubble and thousands of tons of scrap steel amazingly some 99 of this will be recycled the wood from the decks is pulped and made into paper even the 300 tons of algae that collected on the legs will be recycled for compost but most lucrative is the steel once the various grades have been separated out it's then smelted and made into new girders and pipes fittingly just half a mile down the road steel from the smelted remains of machines like lima are being used to build this a brand new 21st century platform and to put it in perspective whereas lima weighed a few hundred tonnes this weighs in a whopping 12 000 tons [Music] platforms like this are giving the north sea a new lease of life [Music] but lima and its gas field are now just a memory [Music] removing it cost more than 200 million pounds took two years and over a million staff hours to recycle 2 000 tonnes of steel 311 tons of algae find homes for two generators and scrap two toilets and 12 well-worn bunks [Music] and ironically some of the north sea tigers who pioneered offshore platform installation are now involved in the biggest new north sea industry taking them back down again [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] 32 000 tons of steel [Music] seven decks each the length of a football pitch four engines burning two and a half thousand liters of fuel an hour so when you're out at sea i can't imagine the noise that makes one massive feat of engineering the north sea ferry the pride of bruges wow can't get too much more up close and personal with the ship than we are yeah battered by the sea for 25 years it's being taken out the water for the biggest overhaul of its life as key parts are stripped down there's a unique chance to explore deep within its hidden features where as far as any sensible person would go every complex system must be rigorously tested and repaired before it can return to service if you've got a high clearance you could actually lose your rudder so these checks they're very important they're very a 120 strong team of highly skilled engineers take on the challenge to replace all that is a massive job they must examine over a thousand separate parts and repair over 10 000 square meters of steel hull this wasn't being done the steel itself will just deteriorate and we'll reveal what happens to these giants when they reach the end of their working lives they're just getting munched up by this hero and how in their death they're given a new lease of life wow it's just an incredible firework display this is engineering giants i'm rob bell i'm a mechanical engineer and i've always loved to get my hands on complex machines to discover how they work i'm tom rigglesworth i'm a trained electrical engineer with a passion for big machines [Music] and this is the pride of bruges the north sea ferry that's going to help us explore exactly how a ship works [Music] it's arriving in newcastle where it will spend the next three weeks being stripped down proud of bruce town pilot we're coming to you now god we're like a mouse coming alongside an elephant here look at this all the ship's key components including its engines propellers rudders and hull will require detailed checks and repairs the problem is that many of the most important parts of the ferry are underwater before any of the checks can take place the first challenge is actually to get this beast into the dock and that's no mean fee engineers won't know the extent of the work ahead of them until all 32 000 tons the weight of over 2 000 double-decker buses are safely out of the sea and to do that the ship must now be precisely maneuvered into the dry dock facility at the amp shipyard on the tine the job of all the guys here around the dock is to get this ship absolutely central and in exactly the right position in the dock on the bottom of the dock underneath the water are what's called docking blocks and they've been laid out in exactly the right position for the design of this ship the pride of bruges earlier today i met up with site manager john leckie to find out how his team was going to accomplish this engineering feat these blocks that the ship will sit on you've been put in particular positions for this ship okay in accordance with its docking plug the meter high steel bases are topped with oak blocks which cushion the immense weight of the ferry preventing damage to its hull while enabling engineers to work right underneath the ship once they're in place the team can flood the dock if by some means it started right now will we have time to get out a quicker runner are you oh it's pretty quick but using water from the river next door fed by gravity the dock is flooded with 133 million litres of water equivalent to 53 olympic sized swimming pools oh wow look at it come out it's absolutely flooding out that did not take long at all it takes another three hours before the water in the dock is at the same level as the river outside then the gate can be dropped engineers have calculated where the hull needs to be positioned in relation to the dock so that the ship ends up exactly above the blocks tonight this task is particularly challenging as there's a strong crosswind this is quite a tense moment and it was the bit that they weren't sure whether they were going to actually carry out tonight because it was so windy with the margin of error less than a meter the ferry is attached by steel lines to winches known as mules so that the ship can be precisely maneuvered from a central control tower [Music] it's such high precision work and with the wind coming across as well it's certainly not easy caught by a gust of wind the ferry is pushed perilously close to the edge of the dock any damage sustained to the ship on its way into dock could cost millions and set the whole schedule back days [Music] finally after two hours of maneuvering the team get the ferry into position and raise the gate next comes the most dangerous part of the operation if the ship is not in exactly the correct position above the blocks as the water is pumped out the hull could be badly damaged these three electric pumps will drain the 133 million liters of water out of the dock each one pumps out 80 and a half thousand tons of water an hour after another four hours it becomes clear that the engineering team's measurements are spot on as the pride of bruges finally comes to rest on its blocks [Music] wow you can't get too much more up close and personal with the ship than we are yeah and you can see the effect of the weight of this ship all 32 000 tons of steel has had on these docking blocks it's very intimidating with the pride of bruges now out of the water for the first time in years engineers including site manager john leckie can examine and begin to repair the most important part of the ship it's hull so john now with this close to the vessel it strikes me there's actually very little of it under the water the volume displaced by what's under the water yeah equals the weight of the vessel in its entirety so there's actually quite a lot under the water especially with this type of ship so if you lowered it if you lowered it into the water as it started to enter the water it would displace one ton two ton three ton photon when that displacement weight matches the weight of the ship yes it stops yeah it flows the shape of a ship's hull depends on the type of work it's designed to carry out for speed v-shaped holes are best enabling ships to cut through the water minimising drag for stability a boxy u-shaped design like our ferry is better creating more cargo space and minimizing rocking [Music] but the shape of a ship's hull isn't enough on its own to ensure its stability and seaworthiness [Music] a perfect level of buoyancy is also needed and to make that happen the ferry can pump up to 2 200 tons of sea water into the network of ballast tanks that run throughout the lower part of its hull the ship is designed to sit at a certain depth in the water if the ship was empty carrying no load it would actually sit so high up in the water that it would appear unstable now this is a bit of an extreme example that's not classic ship shape we can make even this sit in the water with a good degree of stability if we put enough ballast in it and cause it to lower its buoyancy point like that while the dot was being drained the ballast tanks on the pride of brews were emptied so that engineers could begin the filthy job of cleaning out the water inlets known as sea boxers hey up there's a man in there is he a contractor or is he just a dodging affair engineer colin grant has the job of ensuring that this major overhaul runs smoothly guys are working up there cleaning the mud and everything that accumulates because eventually it would clog up and the ship's got a problem so when the ship needs a drink this is its mouth it is as it has to pull in cooling water all the time yeah for the engine put it out again exactly the forward end of the engine room has rows and rows of big pumps for different purposes some to circulate water around the engines and there's lots of engines in there and some to push the ballast water up when it's required right through the length of the ship once the sea boxes have been cleaned engineers will have to squeeze through tight access holes as they venture deeper into the ship's ballast tank system to inspect and repair their steel interior against corrosion the thing that makes this one stand out for me is that we have a great big ship here and you've got the daftest access to it you've ever come across in your life colin qualified as an engineer at the ministry of defence and has always been passionate about ships there are all sorts of plans of the ships but the one that we need for this exercise is this before colin's team can begin examining the ship's labyrinth of ballast tanks he first needs to check that they're safe and that no water remains inside them so normally when this when the ship's out at sea this would all be filled with water it would yes oh the ballast tanks it's pretty pokey around here the tanks are divided into a series of smaller pockets designed to prevent the volume of water equivalent to an olympic sized swimming pool from sloshing around the hull and making the ship unstable so now we're pretty much right down inside the four feet now where as far as any sensible person would go moving around inside these tanks is cramped and claustrophobic as part of the check you'd have engineers coming down here to do what kind of maintenance the condition of the shell has to be checked it's steel it rusts and therefore it has to be monitored look that's all ships of this kind in effect are two things you've got the law part that sits in the water and that's the real ship it's got all the machinery and everything yes all the stuff of a height the passengers go in and the cars go in and all all that stuff is cargo on the actual ship even though it's a permanent part of it yeah this is the bit that has to do the work of getting from here to there safely [Music] and that safety depends on making sure that the hull sits at the correct level in the water too heavier load and the ship could become dangerously low in the water and susceptible to swamping so the simple horizontal line across the circle the plimsel line indicates the maximum load level the other little marks there are indicators for different particular conditions which would be fresh water and salt water or you know and is that because fresh water and salt water are for different voices different densities the salt water is more buoyant it's denser than fresh water and similarly cold water is more it's more buoyant than warm water cold water is more boiling than warm water i never i never know yes and the bruges is designed to compensate for these variables by pumping water in or out of its ballast tanks freedom a part of this ship that i'm keen to get out of i don't envy the guys i have to actually do their work down there oh that's hard work how's that calling one of the one of the perks of the jobs wouldn't do without it love it i wouldn't want everybody to know this but that is one of the attractions of the job i get to go places where normally nobody goes it's brilliant it's a real privilege to come along with you i i went to become an engineer because i just anything internal combustion anything that goes banging up and down and round and round and that's the bigger the better it's in the areas of the ship beneath the water line that most of the important maintenance work over the next three weeks will take place this is where many of the ship's most vital components are located and where i found piano's chief engineer hans pronk he was part of the team that took delivery of the pride of bruges 25 years ago my roots are etsy so see what is in the veins yeah hans's engineering team are about to run tests on a part of the ship that few passengers would even know exists hands why is this little room so important to the passengers one form one performer passengers this controls comfort the ferry is fitted with retractable fins known as stabilizers which help limit the rocking motion at sea that can cause seasickness so this is the actuator that pushes the stabilizer arms out yes so and at the moment in dry dock we get them out for repairs cleaning maintenance and whatever during the tests engineers will be checking that all the hydraulic systems are functioning correctly and that both stabilizers are perfectly synchronized to work together these will only normally be deployed in stormy weathers the flaps at the back are controlled and move up and down and they counteract the rolling of the ship from side to side as this flap goes up on the other side the flap will go down now the really clever thing about these is that they're controlled automatically by the ship through use of a gyroscope system such that when that gyro moves to one side because of the rock of the ship and the role of the waves this thing knows exactly what to do and it knows how far to turn because of how big those waves are clever stuff the pride of bruges was built in japan 25 years ago specifically to carry passengers and cargo 200 miles across the north sea [Music] up from here inside three freight decks can carry up to 850 vehicles above the freight decks are four more levels to accommodate over a thousand passengers and crew complete with two restaurants a nightclub a casino and a hotel with 350 cabins it's amazing it's just this massive almost like a town with all the yeah you wouldn't you wouldn't know you at sea if it wasn't knocking about all over the show would you coordinating the maintenance of a machine this large is a massive task the new cattle engineering team are due to return the pride of brews to the north sea in just 20 days time delays would be disruptive and costly working to a tight deadline the team's biggest challenge is to repair thousands of square meters of steel which is showing its age try and keep a nice even partner while at sea the whole steel surface has come under constant attack from marine life i mean if this wasn't being done the steel itself will just deteriorate sea water is also corrosive and would have caused much greater harm were it not for these metal bars currently being replaced by richie hsn richie what is this piece it's an old satisfactory sacrificial anode it protects the steel basically yeah protects the scale this is a new one is it's the newer one so these are put on the side how many of them are on the on the ship well they should be 50 in total the sacrificial anodes are made of zinc a more reactive metal than steel which means corrosion attacks them first as their name suggests they sacrifice themselves to save the whole [Music] while engineers carry out repairs on the steel exterior of the ship inside work is underway to replace two steel floors each the size of a football pitch in the ferry's car decks it's incredibly noisy down here neil yes overseeing this complex engineering project is neil farquhar the reason was replacing the steel is the wear and tear over the years where the trucks and stuff that goes steel actually wears down oh yeah it wears down you gotta remember this 18 20 times traveling back and forth and trailers and stuff if it goes below a certain millimeters it has to be replaced to replace all that is a massive job to strip out the old decking would take months so engineers will be fixing a new level of steel above the old one saving time and money the blue machine on the left hand side is what we call a blast track machine which shoots shot blast onto the surface to make it absolutely spotless oh it really does isn't it so that leaves the welders the clean surface to come along it's not filing it down before over the next three weeks the team not only have to grind the old decking down but they also have to remove hundreds of manhole covers and fixtures and refit them to the new surface how thick a piece you added on top six mil six mil more that should see it right for another ten years yeah at least yeah yeah yeah extending the life of the ferry is the major goal for this overhaul and a week into the process there's still much to do over 600 square meters of flooring needs to be laid as part of the passenger decks refurbishment the critical moving components that take the brunt of the forces at sea need to be checked and renovated and all four lifeboats must be removed these potentially life-saving vessels can carry up to 150 passengers each they'll be thoroughly examined along with the release mechanism that lowers them into the water part of our service is to make sure that they are working and functioning correctly put them into the water check the release system and do the maintenance safety on the ship is paramount and the main focus for the newcastle engineering team [Music] they're being helped by key members of the ferry's dutch crew who have stayed on board to operate the controls and working parts of the vessel an old ship 25 years plus well maintained well looked after good crew on board who love the ship they do two weeks on two weeks off and obviously treated us at home it's a good team we've got 520 ish crew working together with all the people that's the most important thing that will help you through the two weeks the interaction is really great on this ship different nationalities and yeah that's why i love it training for two weeks on the ship and we're two weeks at home enough time to spend at home with your family no one knows the pride of bruges better than its crew today they're working with colin and the newcastle team to operate the ship's two four-ton anchors they need to examine their 329 metre chains stored in lockers deep in the bow of the vessel for potentially lethal wear the anchors are the only brakes that the ship has right either hit something solid which is undesirable young advisory and the captain gets embarrassed or you hang on to what's down there the ship will not stand still what are we looking for in that inspection any defects that rubs on that yeah naturally that causes wear remember if they are actually anchored those things are working all the time and there's a maximum wear allowed on them [Music] to accurately measure the wear on every single link all 329 metres of chain is released an operation rarely carried out on this ferry except in emergencies you just see the rust flying off of it as the pressure of each one of the links of those chains goes through the teeth on the wheel it's just grinding it straight off [Music] next the team must carefully organize the chain along the bottom of the dock a potentially dangerous task that has crushed dock workers in the past they load the chain onto the ship in length after they've loaded one length on you can see they join it with a red link after one length they paint one link either side with white paint after two lengths there's two links either side get painted white after three lengths three links so you can see a glance exactly how much chain you've fed out the anchor prevents a ship from drifting away due to the currents or tide [Music] a common misconception is that it's the anchor itself that acts as the main weight to secure the ship in its position in fact it's the weight of the chain that holds the ship in place the anchor is merely there to keep the chain in the correct place on the seabed [Music] the final link in the chain is attached to a single pin deep in the bowels of the vessel you pull the pin there it is painted down there's a back up on everything yeah of course pull that pin so that's there so it can't work its way out while nobody's looking yeah and then you get your mightiest crew with him hit him knock it out that pin goes through the the bitter end the last link of the cable so the last link of the chain is called the bitter end yes and the whole anchor and the whole chain is connected to the ship by the bitter end exactly more importantly the ship is connected to the anchor by the bitter end releasing the bitter end would be the captain's last resort casting the ship a drift in the sea you build a ship and you hope that will never be used except for normal anchor chain changes yes [Music] the anchor and its chain is 25 years old the same age as the ship and like many of the ship's 10 million components as it gets older it will require an increasing amount of maintenance and repairs in the end the pride of bruges will simply become too costly to keep running then it will end up at a ship breaking yard like this one in belgium the largest of its kind in europe here over 50 ships a year are plundered for spare parts and broken up it's the perfect place to look even more closely at how all ships are built there's all manner of activity going on here ships being sailed in to get cut up scrapped and it all gets loaded up and taken off to be recycled ships usually arrive at the yard in full working order looks like it's just been completely abandoned the salvage team led by mario mias then get to work removing any valuable components left on board that's a pretty massive engine a working engine could fetch over 50 000 pounds so how much of this weight roughly uh 27 27 tons 27 tons of engine the team must be careful removing a heavy engine while the ship is still afloat can weaken its thin finely balanced hull snapping it in half i mean that would be disastrous you've got people on board cutting and people on board residues of oil into the water so let alone the value of the ship as well that you could it would be a cut of [Music] that's it it's catastrophe job done engine safely out the remaining hull is now light enough to be hauled up onto dry land to be cut up and recycled effectively we're just dragging it from the sea up here on to try that [Music] this mexican dredging vessel used to pump sand and silt off the bottom of south american ports it has a hull that follows the same principle and dimensions of our ferry just half the size stand in front of this perfect cross section of a ship cut right through it just gives you a brilliant picture of the structure and what goes on inside i mean better than any engineering drawing could ever give you and whilst this is obviously built and designed to transport cargo and our ship people and cars the principle is very much the same the flat bottom hull and the ballast tanks on the side the other great thing about this cross section is it allows you to see how thick the hull is or in fact actually how thin it is that's probably what couple of centimeters at max can you just imagine how something as thin as this could get ripped to shreds if it came off against something solid like a rock it will take another two weeks for the salvage team to cut up the rest of this 2 000 ton hull ready to be recycled our ship the pride of bruges should be at least another 10 years away from this stage of its life cycle in newcastle the ferry is now halfway through its three-week overhaul and so far the engineering team are on schedule throughout the process one of its four diesel engines has been ticking over to provide electrical power to the ship's control systems i'm right at the back of the arc of the ship the real business end and down here is where the engines are the power this beast of a vessel [Music] it's the heart of the beast that's where all the action is it's it's alive it pumps the energy through the ship and you can feel it when you're in there you can't hear anything else but you feel it even with ear protectors on when the ship is at sea it's simply too loud in the engine room for engineers to work safely for long periods so while the ship is in dry dock chief engineer hans pronk and his team have just a few days to check the thousands of valves for any leaks and carry out important system checks on the engine's complex electronic controls so you you're able to see here and actually control everything out in the engines all the pumps all the generators all the things will be displayed on a screen like this as you see the controls over here for are for pumps controls for propels the controls for generators the control for maintenance clutching de-glitching steering steering everything despite the noise and heat hands is never more at home than when he's in an engine room when you're out at sea it's even more noisy than it is now down here yeah all four engines would be running constantly driving the ship's two propellers as well as supplying the ship with hot water and enough electricity to power a small town i mean this really gives you an idea of the size of the engines and the pistons so the diameter of a piston inside the engine is that a piston in a regular car engine is closer to the size of a fizzy drink can ah this piston here that's just been refurbished has it ready to be used again yes you see it's not brand new yeah yeah i can see but it's fit for use it's how much would one of these cost you about seven thousand for the top mark you saw that it's been split here and then you have the lower part that's in the not seven thousand directly so around fourteen fifteen thousand pounds in addition to 30 pistons costing 182 000 pounds there are tens of thousands of valve pumps and pipes all working together to supply the ship with the power it needs so what's the power that we've got on here enhanced it's five thousand seven hundred and sixty kilowatts the power output from average cars what in kilowatts but oh hundred kilowatts about so that means this is about the same power output as about 58 cars yes in total the ferry's four engines generate a power equivalent to over 200 cars and on a 14-hour crossing of the north sea that means the pride of bruges will get through over 30 tons of diesel fuel [Music] back at the shipbreaking yard in belgium a fuel tank has been split wide open revealing what the vessel consumed and how it consumed it the fuel they use on ships is one of the cheapest real heavy fuel oil you can get i mean look at it i mean this is kind of crude oil once you've taken off gas petrol diesel what's what's a refinery this is kind of what's left it's like treacle so on it on a ship it has to go through the fuel goes to three different stages before it can actually be injected into the engine and being burned the pipeline you see running through yeah it's kind of like um the heating element at the bottom of a kettle this is used to heat up the fuel so it goes from this really viscous thick sticky stuff into something more liquid that they can start pumping through the fuel system so it gets thinned out by being kept yeah it gets thinned out but it's not ready to be burnt yeah because actually in this you've got all sorts of impurities there's water in there as well and they've got a really clever system for separating out the stuff that we don't want so we get a fuel oil that is burnable and that system is called a centrifuge which i'm going to demonstrate with a bicycle and a bottle full of a mixture of sand water and oil to represent the ship's fuel and its impurities so i'm going to get this wheel spinning here much as it would be on the centrifuge on a ship now as that spins deceleration forces the heavier objects or the denser objects towards the outer edge of our bottle so let's have a look at what we've been left with wow with our little makeshift centrifuge so you can quite clearly see there the heavier density was thrown right out and that's the sand that's the impurities within the fuel on the ship yeah then you've got the water that represents the water in the fuel on the ship and up top you've got the least dense liquid in there and that's the oil and that would be the fuel oil on the ship which can then be tapped off and burnt in the engines very good at sea two and a half thousand liters of this fuel is burnt every hour on the pride of bruges generating over 40 000 horsepower most of which is used to turn the ship's two colossal propellers linked to the engines by these 130 meter long shafts this shot runs right from the transmission right out to the propeller yes absolutely yeah the shafts are so long because if the engines and propellers were next to each other their combined weight of over 200 tons would place too much weight in the stern of the ship making the ferry unstable the propellers work by pushing water in one direction causing the ship to be moved in the other the angle and speed of the blades affect the volume of water being moved and therefore the speed of the ship at four and a half meters in diameter and weighing 14 tons each the two propellers on the bruges can spin at 120 revolutions a minute they're in the process of being polished by engineer paul baker and his team an essential job they can only do when the ship is in dry dock once they've been polished then we will crack detect the areas that you crack detect are in the palm where the bolts are okay and on the tips of the blades okay this is purely to identify whether or not there is any surface imperfections or fractures within the blade material these surface imperfections can be caused by a phenomenon known as cavitation when the propeller is spinning the rapid changes of pressure in the water around the blades can cause cavities or bubbles to form the constant implosion of these bubbles as the liquid collapses into the void produces a shock wave which can damage the surface metal of the propeller if left unchecked cavitation could result in a ship losing a blade so this is being expected at the moment it is we will proceed with the polishing of the blades and the crack detection so when you polish it yes what's the effect that that will have it's efficiency it will improve the efficiency it will improve the efficiency of the blade as regards the resistance within the water okay so therefore it will reduce these fuel costs okay it's all about reducing fuel costs those costs are further lowered by the ingenious design of the propellers which enable the captain to control the pitch of the blades an invention that's best demonstrated by this replica model unlike in cars where the engine speed determines that how fast the car is going that's not necessarily the case in ships it's the angle of the blades in the water which is going to determine how fast you're moving so when the propellers are in this position now which they're quite flat it's pretty much like having a dinner plate slapped onto the end of the shaft so when it's spinning it's not giving you any forward thrust and when you start to change the pitch you start to get an increased amount of thrust and propulsion forwards on the ship if the captain then wants to reverse the ship what happens is he reverses the angle of these blades completely such that the water is being propelled in the opposite direction and the ship goes backwards and that means he doesn't have to slow down the propeller from the forward direction crank it in and then speed it back up again that whole process can be done whilst the shaft's still turning so this clever design makes the ship that much more maneuverable with quicker response times and is more fuel efficient making it much cheaper to run [Music] it's now only 10 days before the pride of brute is due to ferry passengers and cargo across the north sea and with time running out engineers must make sure that all the critical components usually underwater are in perfect working order [Music] any failures at sea would mean returning the ship to dry dock resulting in a huge financial cost and a cancelled service a faulty rudder would prevent the crew from being able to steer the ferry into port unaided so paul and his team must now check that the rudders washes and bearings known as bushes haven't worn down due to continual movement in the water you do get a wave factor on these and sometimes you have to pot the blade and the flap and renew these riding washers and what would be the situation where you'd have to actually remove the whole rudder if we have a problem with the main trunk housing yeah if the clearance is excessive then we have to lower the the rudder remove the rudder take the post out and renew the bush so what's what's the danger of not spotting something like that where you've got a really high clearance if you've got a high clearance you could actually lose your rudder at sea yeah you'd lose a runner so these checks they're very important they're very important housed directly above the photon rudders are the hydraulic actuators that move them they're controlled electronically by the ship's steering wheel at the bow of the vessel [Music] i'm fascinated to know how you control a ship like this so i want to find the nerve center i want to find the bridge i've arranged to meet the most important man on the ship it's captain arie canyworth down the bridge harry good morning hey good morning tom welcome this is the bridge i found it bridge yes it's hard to find hidden behind closed doors it seems to be for obvious reasons the main controls to maneuver the ferry in close quarters are located on the bridge's wings that protrude beyond each side of the hull so that the captain can see along either side of the vessel we have the bow thrusters here at our disposal now these are just those little propellers well say little they're about six four relatively little and i can move the bow uh basically sideways yeah so you've got rudder here rudder power thrusters and uh and both engines um i thought you'd have a wheel i thought there'd be a wooden wheel uh you want to see the wheel i think you'll be a little bit disappointed with our view this is this is it this has been modernized doesn't it this is it it isn't what i expected well the big steering wheels are getting smaller the the ships and the rudders that drive them are getting bigger as a passenger and cargo ferry the ship is regularly in and out of port so maneuverability is key therefore the vessel has been equipped with special rudders these are becca rudders um they're a high maneuverability rudder uh you have a flap as you can see on the the mechanism here becca flap so what's the advantage of having this on the back of the rudder itself she increases the maneuverability of the of the vessel water that's been driven through the propeller is diverted by the angle of the rudder changing the direction of the ship the addition of the becca flap to the rudder is an ingenious yet simple way of getting extra maneuverability because of its position this smaller flap has a bigger effect on diverting the water flow making tighter quicker turns possible [Music] so what would be happening if you're doing 18 knots top speed top speed clear day yeah and you just when the ship will list considerably okay everything that's not secure will fall down clearly there's no way to see ahri maneuver the ship while it's in dry dock but fortunately the pride of bruges has a sister ship the pride of york built in scotland to exactly the same specifications as its japanese sister the york also carries out the daily halters rugger crossing between the two ships they ferry 400 000 holidaymakers and business travelers between britain and the continent every you on board the year of york the ship is now securely and we will leave the birth shortly as dust falls we're offered a rare opportunity to view the most challenging parts of its journey from the bridge so alistair why is it so such mellow lighting all crafts are illuminated and we have navigation lights it's an imperative that we see those lights as soon as possible any background light on the bridge would spoil our night vision we wouldn't see those other ships it's the same reason there's a new car it's exactly the same exactly if you have bright lights in your car you can't see what's inside the windows captain alastair mcfadden shares the skipper role with his dutch counterpart which means tonight he's free to explain how the crew maneuvers the ferry through a narrow lock on its departure from hull [Music] all the navigation is going on down the other end of the captain rowley and the chief officer they're maneuvering the vessel at the moment so this is quite an intricate maneuver which is we're trying to get this enormous very interesting tiny little small gap yes so when we're in there how much leeway have we got you put about 18 inches either side of the vessel as we move in it's a very um tricky maneuver we use our own machinery main engines and bow thrusters and of course the rudders to get the ship in here and as you can see we do things very slowly yeah and nice and gently the smallest of errors could result in damage to the hull where many of the ship's most important components are housed but the york has been designed to the exact specifications of this particular lock is it not an argument economically to have a smaller ship or a bigger block that you can be quicker so you can you can get more ships through the bare fact is that the lock is built and if they built it twice as big we would have built a ship twice as big now the ship has to wait until the level of the water inside the lock reaches the same level as the river outside the whole idea of this dock basin is to maintain a certain depth of water all the time so any ships inside always have a guaranteed amount of water under their keel so they can work cargo throughout their stay in the port here we go there we go the crew now have to navigate the ferry 200 miles across busy shipping lanes in the north sea this is the route that we will be taking and so we'll be on the starboard side of the channel we'll come all the way down to the sea reach once we get to that point we'll alter course to a course of one to four degrees all the way down to zebruga today ships are equipped with global positioning systems that use satellites to fix the ship's location to within meters and an automatic identification system that then broadcasts the information to nearby vessels superimposing that information onto the english channel reveals how ships have to stick to lanes like traffic on a motorway but despite all the latest technology a captain must still be able to fall back on the charts like any prudent mariner you don't rely on electronics so we could take a bearing and distance from a point of land using the parallel rules here recognize those a very simple tool very effective and it's used by lining up on the compass rows here and then you line up to whichever bearing required and then you can just simply move them across the chart to transfer a position like okay very simple very practical and sadly soon to disappear seem to disappear how come well the ships are modern uh ships are now moving towards electronic chart displays and that will be their main navigational source so alistair's worked on ferries like the pride of york for 38 years and i'm keen to know if he has an emotional bond with these ships i think you do always develop a bond with the vessels you work on for any length of time it's not the ship the ship is just a vessel it's the people on it that really make a ship and you can have the best ship in the world with a rubbish crew and an everyday drags it's horrendous and you can have a really older ship with lots of challenges but with the right crew it's a pleasure to come to work fantastic what's the most challenging thing for you when you're capturing it the weather whether where the weather is is that something you you relish as a challenge i don't think i would ever say i relish the challenge of the weather because we are mere mortals and and i think you know from my experience the people that get caught out are the guys that relish the challenge the ferry has all the latest navigation technology to help while sensors located throughout the vessel give early warning signs of any engineering problems and hazards including flooding but it still needs the skills of its crew to sail this ship safely in all weathers across 200 miles of north sea with up to a thousand people on board this is such a gorgeous way to end a journey it's an incredibly civilized way to get across to the continent isn't it yeah it really is very civilized our arrival in the belgium port of zubrugger gives us a chance to return to the ship salvage yard nearby to see what happens to a ship's carcass once it's been torn apart [Music] this is what ends up happening to ships at this scrapyard without any respect for the work they've done they're just getting munched up by this shearer and thrown up on the scrappy and this is what the salvage team are after steel mountains and mountains of steel three-quarters of a million tons of steel is salvaged at this recycling yard every year ready to be shipped up the river to the arcella mittal steel plant where the next stage in its life cycle begins here containers the size of three-story buildings carry molten metal through the giant production line it's just so impressive the size of the equipment and the temperatures involved five million tons of steel is produced here every year a quarter of which is made from scrap here we have just three days worth and it's all waiting to be recycled and turned into cars bridges and fridges the scrap steel is loaded into enormous containers the size of a bus and transported to the converter a vessel capable of producing 295 tons of steel at a time oh i mean that is a hellish noise to match kind of hellish vision in a way isn't it hot metal produced by melting iron ore in a blast furnace is then poured on top of the scrap metal the temperature inside the converter is now a scorching 1650 degrees celsius so as they pull the hot metal in now it's just it's just an incredible firework display 220 tons of molten iron being poured over 80 tons of scrap steel i mean they should sell tickets for this steel is essentially iron with many of its impurities removed specifically the carbon which is weak and brittle to reduce the carbon the next stage is to add pure oxygen into the mix wow extremely bright flame there suggests that's the oxygen lamps being hot inside they inject oxygen for about 15 minutes which helps take the carbon that's in the metal and turn it into carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide once that's extracted you're left with a more pure steel that we're looking for once the converter has been emptied the purified steel must go through a number of processors to cool it and mold it into usable sheets [Music] this is where they call it ingots of steel down using water presumably from the local river or canal in sheffield they use the local rivers and that causes the temperature in the river to rise by just enough to allow fig trees to grow on the riverbanks of south yorkshire [Music] wow that is so impressive and this is a finished item a huge roll of steel what i must describe to you is how hot that thing is you can feel it from here it's searingly hot some of that once made up the ship that we saw floating on the ocean now it's been turned into this it's next thing is going to be turned into your next car or washing machine it could even be used to build a ship in newcastle there are now just two days until the pride of bruges is due to head back into service [Music] work's begun to cover the part of the ship's hull usually underwater in a special paint designed to prevent the build-up of marine life therefore improving the ship's fuel efficiency as paint quality inspector tim emerson explains once that growth attaches itself to the ship it slows the ship down it has a dragon effect on it yeah which obviously means that they've got to use more energy to drive the propellers to make the ship travel at the same speed which obviously is impacting on the on the fuel costs i find it hard to believe that a few barnacles is going to cause a problem of fuel efficiency yeah it can cause a huge problem the amount of fuel used to drive these vessels is huge typically you're looking at around 90 tons of fuel a day typically if there was no anti-foaling on there um once you put the anti-foaling on you can reduce that down to between 40-50 tons a day if it was going in your pocket every day yeah yeah i mean i would like it as well yeah you know we wouldn't have to work again the anti-fowling paint is a technological marvel in its own right it's been cleverly designed to react to movement of the ship through the water by continually shedding microscopic particles of itself this means that marine life is unable to get a grip on the hull every last square meter of the ship above and below the water line has to be repainted and with the bruges already scheduled to carry passengers on the same day the overhaul is due to finish for the next 48 hours they have to work around the clock to get the work done [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's the final day of the overhaul and the pride of bruges is almost ready to bid farewell to newcastle she's been well maintained and i think it's a dedication of the the ship staff and all departments that keep it in the condition it's in now over four tons of paint now cover and protect the ship's exterior after 25 years he's still in a very good niche so this is a major achievement and we'd like to keep her like this and try to maintain her as such the passenger levels have been refurbished i'm proud that we have accomplished what we did it looks a lot better now yeah everything what should be working is working which is very nice to know propellers have been polished and tested and the rudders have been serviced ready for inspection it's looking good isn't it it's looking spicky it looks very good yeah now the team have to get the ship back in the water engineers open the sluice gates to flood the dock re-floating the ship is a risky operation especially in the critical moments when the ship lifts off the blocks as docking master alan webster explains it's a term that we call the point of criticality right that's where the ships are it's most dangerous from being on the blocks to becoming free-flowing how do you account for the fact that there's no passengers on it there's no cargo on it so it's it's a dangerously light point yeah that's why i have to re-ballast before she lifts off the blocks because if it didn't chances around the supercap size really yeah okay so to prevent that you've got to put the ballast back into the ballast late in the evening the pride of bruges slowly lifts off its blocks and floats for the first time in three weeks once the level of the water inside the dock is at the same level as outside alan gives a signal to drop the gate his team have a narrow window of just over an hour to maneuver the ship into the river before the tide goes down and it's left grounded [Music] tugboats slowly tow the ferry from the dock and allen's work is done not so bad no it's all right yeah turn it nicely [Music] thanks to the work of the newcastle engineering team the pride of bruges should now be in service for another 10 years [Music]

Channel: Spark

Views: 4,917,058

Keywords: engineering documentary, giant vehicles, mega vehicles, spark, science documentary, jumbo jet, planes, aircraft, aircraft engineering, passenger plane, boeing 747, north sea ferry, boat, ferry, ship, megastructure, demolition, gigantic car ferry heavy maintenance, ferry engineering, ship engineering, ship overhaul, ferry overhaul, ferry documentary, ship documentary, ship parts, ship repair, ferry repair, heavy maintenance, ship maintenance, ship maintenance documentary

Id: FNvrvwcSiZY

Length: 176min 26sec (10586 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 12 2021