Please feel free to ignore the optional natter in italics as to how I ended up in here context. Feel like a tool clogging up the forum with phone photos (again, guilty), but it's the only non-lazy day out I've been involved with in a couple of months, tbh
An impulsive one... Enjoying the summer weather with a sesh at Zona, when one other homie and I seemed to get a tad bored of more lazy weekends in a row than i care to admit and started piping up about checking in on Tilbury on the way back to London. Was not prepared to go exploring - didn't have a camera between us, I was still in my skate shoes, etc. Anyway, we swung round. Few tinnies each and feeling a bit blarz-ay, two of us promised the other two in the crowd (who couldn't be bothered with fences and what not and opted to sag in the car) that we 'wouldn't be long scoping it out' and sauntered off down the long road to the power station. I was aware there was an ongoing demolition job for the last few years but was interested to take a closer look at what the hell is keeping the blocks still standing. It's a rather heavily fortified one is Tilbury in terms of obstacle infrastructure, but hey, we managed to turn up. Flurries of huge debris around from other bits and bobs of what was the power station (which provided 80% of Essex's entire power supply for over 50 years, don't you know) strewn around the bases of the big blocks led me to assume the 'stripping out' job progress was pretty far along. But nope. Honestly don't know what B & M demolition have been doing for the last 40+ months but they've still left two 80+m high pretty intimidating looking... some-things (can't think of any other nouns to attribute except 'blocks' again, sorry) sitting around within which a South East-based huge-industrial-machinery-lover (which I have to say I can't call myself) can happily mooch through for a few hours at least. Satisfactorily structually sound approved for the time being. The bad news is that the non-pigeon shit control rooms (which used to be middle south end of each block) are no longer there. They've just neatly removed them. Must have been what's holding them up. Whilst the chimney and old pigeon-shit control room building went last year and a few years ago respectively, the north block is further along its wreckage-process than the south.
Anyway, albeit a far cry from the mintness this place offered in 2015, here's an overview of some vistas it still offers for summer 2018;
The upper 2/3s of the side-wall-removed north block looking frightful. They're bloody tall! Most of the mooching is spent going up and down stairs.
Lots of big ol' pipes dissecting the whole thing.
Big ol' hoppers (feeders for boiler units). Dealt with mainly coal, dabbled in biomass and oil, so I hear.
Sorry about the disgraceful blur :/ really need to get a new phone. Or remember to bring my camera...
Old turbine hall/house, near the what-was control room. Its blue and yellow colour scheme has well and truly faded.
More big ol' pipes and boilers.
Plenty of contactor boards. Innards of them available for scoping too.
Did I forget to mention confrontations with high balconies, monster pipework and block-of-flats sized hoppers around most corners? No? Here's some more anyway.
Finally, probably the most interesting part left, the feeder conveyors. These would carry coal (and later biomass) from the dockyard crane over the hoppers (which one can view, nauseously, underneath the gangway) before being dropped in and ending up in the boilers.
Also around;
Roof terrace (generally boring, ok-ish view of the estuary)
Access to inside the boilers (dark, dusty, dingey, cavernous, not for me thx)
Cranes at the top (good viewpoint of the turbine hall - picture i took from there was so damn blurry ffs).
Would strongly not recommend for those with fear of heights.
Cheers
Olkka
An impulsive one... Enjoying the summer weather with a sesh at Zona, when one other homie and I seemed to get a tad bored of more lazy weekends in a row than i care to admit and started piping up about checking in on Tilbury on the way back to London. Was not prepared to go exploring - didn't have a camera between us, I was still in my skate shoes, etc. Anyway, we swung round. Few tinnies each and feeling a bit blarz-ay, two of us promised the other two in the crowd (who couldn't be bothered with fences and what not and opted to sag in the car) that we 'wouldn't be long scoping it out' and sauntered off down the long road to the power station. I was aware there was an ongoing demolition job for the last few years but was interested to take a closer look at what the hell is keeping the blocks still standing. It's a rather heavily fortified one is Tilbury in terms of obstacle infrastructure, but hey, we managed to turn up. Flurries of huge debris around from other bits and bobs of what was the power station (which provided 80% of Essex's entire power supply for over 50 years, don't you know) strewn around the bases of the big blocks led me to assume the 'stripping out' job progress was pretty far along. But nope. Honestly don't know what B & M demolition have been doing for the last 40+ months but they've still left two 80+m high pretty intimidating looking... some-things (can't think of any other nouns to attribute except 'blocks' again, sorry) sitting around within which a South East-based huge-industrial-machinery-lover (which I have to say I can't call myself) can happily mooch through for a few hours at least. Satisfactorily structually sound approved for the time being. The bad news is that the non-pigeon shit control rooms (which used to be middle south end of each block) are no longer there. They've just neatly removed them. Must have been what's holding them up. Whilst the chimney and old pigeon-shit control room building went last year and a few years ago respectively, the north block is further along its wreckage-process than the south.
Anyway, albeit a far cry from the mintness this place offered in 2015, here's an overview of some vistas it still offers for summer 2018;
The upper 2/3s of the side-wall-removed north block looking frightful. They're bloody tall! Most of the mooching is spent going up and down stairs.
Lots of big ol' pipes dissecting the whole thing.
Big ol' hoppers (feeders for boiler units). Dealt with mainly coal, dabbled in biomass and oil, so I hear.
Sorry about the disgraceful blur :/ really need to get a new phone. Or remember to bring my camera...
Old turbine hall/house, near the what-was control room. Its blue and yellow colour scheme has well and truly faded.
More big ol' pipes and boilers.
Plenty of contactor boards. Innards of them available for scoping too.
Did I forget to mention confrontations with high balconies, monster pipework and block-of-flats sized hoppers around most corners? No? Here's some more anyway.
Finally, probably the most interesting part left, the feeder conveyors. These would carry coal (and later biomass) from the dockyard crane over the hoppers (which one can view, nauseously, underneath the gangway) before being dropped in and ending up in the boilers.
Also around;
Roof terrace (generally boring, ok-ish view of the estuary)
Access to inside the boilers (dark, dusty, dingey, cavernous, not for me thx)
Cranes at the top (good viewpoint of the turbine hall - picture i took from there was so damn blurry ffs).
Would strongly not recommend for those with fear of heights.
Cheers
Olkka
