The history
Well I’ve pretty much covered the history in my other report about this place, but after much conversation on here about there being a power station on site, well I had to head back.
The Explore
This was an afterthought on the way to Surrey with a non-forum exploring friend. We were chatting power stations and I remembered this place……
So we parked up in the same spot as I had before and headed in the same way, avoided security in the same way, yeah you get it did it all the same. But this time I was on a mission.
We headed to where I believed the power station to be, well from what I had looked at on google earth.
This is where it got a little odd and hopefully someone with a lot more power station knowledge than I have can help.
We found the Gas turbine buildings, labelled 1 and 2.
Awesome here we go
We opened the door of Building 1 not really sure what to be expecting, just hoping to see something looking turbineish, but were greeted with what appeared to be a Twin-turbocharged V12 diesel engine. Albeit pretty funky it was not what I was expecting.
Now this monster V12 engine had the legend Detroit Diesel cast into its rocker covers, not your normal Big Diesel Cummins you might have expected but a General Motors Monster, with a small dog eating Turbocharger mounted on either side.
This one was pretty oily and looked like it had seen a lot of action, although according to the oil filter had last been serviced in 2014.
From what I could work out, and if someone can correct me please do, this huge engine drove an offset torque convertor, which they in turn drove what looked like an alternator/generator via a flexible coupling. Thus generating power for the site, I guess?
After having a quick google these engines where fitted into pretty much anything GM could cram then into, Lorries, fire trucks, boats and buildings it seems. Being the V12 this engine was typical just over 18 litres in cubic capacity, chuck 2 turbochargers at it and you have some serious BHP
Moving onto the next gas turbine and already a little confused we found almost an identical set up but with a baby version of the engine, This one was just a mere V8 twin turbo Detroit diesel engine, although in much much nicer condition.
On leaving the turbine housing we knew there must be some kind of control room somewhere
We what we did find where a couple of control rooms and the one bigger main control room, this was pretty much left as it should have been.
After the control rooms we decided to have a look at the other buildings around the power station and the control rooms before we made a sharp exit for some lunch lol
