Essen: drillers, embankment and works railway, 1937
Workers break up a stony slope with pneumatic drills above rows of houses and factory chimneys, and a small locomotive waits with its tipper wagons.
On a steep, stony slope men in caps bend over pneumatic drills fed by long hoses; one stands on the rim of the cut working his drill into the ground above rows of plain houses, pithead frames and chimneys. A gang of four drills and swings picks in a deep cutting before the long halls of the works, small figures climb across the face of a towering embankment, and a narrow-gauge tank locomotive stands with its train of tipper wagons against a horizon of smokestacks.
In the Ruhr the building boom of the rearmament years reached every corner: new railway lines, roads and works sidings were cut through the slag and spoil of a century of mining. Pneumatic drills had replaced the pick for the hardest work, but the shovel still did the rest.
