Report - Centrale Thermique & Terre Rouge, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg July 2014

[mookster]

Terre Rouge and Centrale Thermique were long-standing mainstays of European exploring, I had wanted to see Centrale Thermique for years and years and finally did so on my last trip to the continent.

Terre Rouge was an enormous former ironworks established in 1870, taken over by ARBED in 1937 and it began producing steel. Later the Arcelor Mittal group took it over and it closed in 1997. The furnaces were all demolished a few years later leaving only the iron ore silos and a couple of other buildings standing, along with the power station known as Centrale Thermique a short distance away. Unfortunately the power station was demolished in 2015 but the iron ore silos that make up the Terre Rouge part of the site are still there.

We started at the iron ore silos early on a gorgeous July morning, we had a fairly quick nose around as we all wanted to get to the power station in good time. I know from seeing photos there were ways up to the top of the silos but either we were blind and couldn't see them or we just didn't look hard enough.

Onwards we headed to Centrale Thermique. I had wanted to see this place basically since I started exploring so it was a big tick off my list to finally see it. Walking onto the site it couldn't have been any easier, it was situated next to a part of the waste ground of the former works that had people working on it but nobody cared. That's the sort of thing I miss about exploring on the continent, apparently nobody gives a crap. We found a way in and lost ourselves in the bowels of the power station. The large fixed circular platform in the turbine hall here has always intrigued me as it's function is completely unknown to me, I've never seen anything like it before or since in any power station.

Thanks for looking ​

 

[Bugsuperstar]

I like that mate. All these shiny power stations are lovely and all but this sort of thing gets me going far more.

Top shots too.

 

[raisinwing]

Quality stuff, those reflections shots are very noice!

 

[Calamity Jane]

Industrial goodness all around. Quality work. I like the reflections, but then seeing the sector systems, walkways, pipes, and shoots. Controls etc whats not to like here. Cracking relaxed explore.

 

[jST]

Cool man, the only derp I know to have a border between countries running through the site! Never made it here, always looked a bit far gone and graffed.

 

[HughieD]

Derp powerstation! These places tend to be mint or completely stripped so that's a nice change.

 

[zombizza]

Very nice.
This has so many similarities to the IM one in Charleroi

 

[urbanchemist]

Just can't past the horrible graffiti in places like this - pity because the ungraff'd bits look great.

 

[mookster]

Just can't past the horrible graffiti in places like this - pity because the ungraff'd bits look great.

It's weird because if a power station is derelict for as long as this one was they tend to be totally stripped with the empty shell full of graff, this one was unique in being unstripped but also full of graff! It's one place I'd have liked to have seen soon after closure for sure.