[3][4] It consisted of two companies with headquarters at Bright Street, Middlesbrough (shared with a section of the Coast Brigade of the Regular RE).

[3][8] When the Volunteers were subsumed into the new Territorial Force (TF) under the Haldane Reforms in 1908, the former submarine miners were redesignated again, the Tees Division becoming the North Riding (Fortress) Royal Engineers, with a single Electric Lights Company at Bright Street.

At this stage of the war the NAD was barely troubled by German raids, and most of the men of medical category A1 had been withdrawn from the AA defences and sent to join the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front[15] All TF units were demobilised in 1919 after the Armistice with Germany.

The North Riding (Fortress) Engineers, consisting of No 1 Electric Light and Works Company, was reformed in the renamed Territorial Army (TA) in 1920, forming part of North Eastern Coastal Defences in 50th (Northumbrian) Divisional Area, with its HQ still at the RE Drill Hall in Bright St, Middlesbrough.

[19] After the completion of the North African campaign, the Allied forces in the Mediterranean moved on to invade Sicily and then mainland Italy.

Power stations in the south of the country were quickly captured intact, but north of Naples and Foggia the Germans had destroyed everything to do with electricity supply: power stations, sub-stations, hydro-electric dam sluices, transmission lines and pylons were all wrecked.

Once the Allies reached Rome in mid-1944 they discovered that less than 10 per cent of the 800,000 kW generating capacity of central Italy was in working order.