Tilbury B Power Station, Essex.
Visited with Speedio. I appreciate that Tilbury's been getting a lot of love lately, but having just posted a shockingly average cottage hospital I felt the need to restore the balance and post something, you know, not shit.
As Speed has pointed out, after a reasonably successful day in London we came to blows over which power station we should visit next. I was keen for Grain, as I know that they've started decommissioning it and I want to see those crazy GEC turbines before they're skipped. Speed wanted to see Tilbury while there was no activity on site. In the end he was the one driving so I really didn't have a say in the matter, although as it turns out I thoroughly enjoyed Tilbury. There's a good chance Grain is totally stripped now whereas this place is mint, and the main reason I was put off is that I was expecting the station to be fairly modern and lifeless but as it happened we found plenty of oldschool machinery and 60s signage.
Not much else to report other than the fact we had a pretty relaxed visit for once. There was certainly no splinter-celling over security or hiding from foul-smelling npower engineers this time. Whether or not that's a good thing I'm not so sure..
Pulverising fuel mill (absolutely vast compared to the one at Uskmouth from the other month)
In fact, everything in here was about twice as big as it's corresponding part in Uskmouth
I believe these fed coal into the Pulverising Fuel Mill to be crushed
It was at this point we realised that the the station wasn't going to be as modern and lifeless as we'd feared.
Propane burners for igniting the coal dust
From the boiler house gantry:
The architecture of the turbine hall itself didn't really do it for me. The station was built in the 1960s but I have a feeling the turbine hall has been retrofitted at some point.. either way, it felt more like a 1980s leisure centre than a power station.
It was, however, astonishing to see how far technology advanced in 10-or-so years. Just one unit in the B station had the same output as all 7 in the A station combined.
In retrospect we should have gone down that staircase and had a poke about below the turbines, but I was feeling a little bit 'turbined out' by this point.
The rooms off the side of the turbine hall housed the switchgear. I did briefly go in but it felt very live in there, however I did dig the groovy escape hatches in the floor:
The decommissioned generating set, very interesting:
And finally a stator, or in layman's terms the coil set that the rotor spins in to generate electricity, in pristine condition. Also note the dismantled turbine blades to the left. Half a million horsepower in this picture ffs
I'd still rather have done Grain.
Visited with Speedio. I appreciate that Tilbury's been getting a lot of love lately, but having just posted a shockingly average cottage hospital I felt the need to restore the balance and post something, you know, not shit.
As Speed has pointed out, after a reasonably successful day in London we came to blows over which power station we should visit next. I was keen for Grain, as I know that they've started decommissioning it and I want to see those crazy GEC turbines before they're skipped. Speed wanted to see Tilbury while there was no activity on site. In the end he was the one driving so I really didn't have a say in the matter, although as it turns out I thoroughly enjoyed Tilbury. There's a good chance Grain is totally stripped now whereas this place is mint, and the main reason I was put off is that I was expecting the station to be fairly modern and lifeless but as it happened we found plenty of oldschool machinery and 60s signage.
Not much else to report other than the fact we had a pretty relaxed visit for once. There was certainly no splinter-celling over security or hiding from foul-smelling npower engineers this time. Whether or not that's a good thing I'm not so sure..
Pulverising fuel mill (absolutely vast compared to the one at Uskmouth from the other month)
In fact, everything in here was about twice as big as it's corresponding part in Uskmouth
I believe these fed coal into the Pulverising Fuel Mill to be crushed
It was at this point we realised that the the station wasn't going to be as modern and lifeless as we'd feared.
Propane burners for igniting the coal dust
From the boiler house gantry:
The architecture of the turbine hall itself didn't really do it for me. The station was built in the 1960s but I have a feeling the turbine hall has been retrofitted at some point.. either way, it felt more like a 1980s leisure centre than a power station.
It was, however, astonishing to see how far technology advanced in 10-or-so years. Just one unit in the B station had the same output as all 7 in the A station combined.
In retrospect we should have gone down that staircase and had a poke about below the turbines, but I was feeling a little bit 'turbined out' by this point.
The rooms off the side of the turbine hall housed the switchgear. I did briefly go in but it felt very live in there, however I did dig the groovy escape hatches in the floor:
The decommissioned generating set, very interesting:
And finally a stator, or in layman's terms the coil set that the rotor spins in to generate electricity, in pristine condition. Also note the dismantled turbine blades to the left. Half a million horsepower in this picture ffs
I'd still rather have done Grain.
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