This place has been a bit of a nemesis of mine for the last few months. I work practically opposite it and quite often sit eating my lunch on the river front staring across at it. I had been meaning to go take a look at it for quite some time having seen others photos and around June, myself @The_Raw and @extreme_ironing decided to take a look on the way back from somewhere else. Alas it wasn't to be that night and we walked away.
Fast forward a few weeks, and myself and extreme_ironing came up with a plan, alas one major flaw in our plan, we forgot to check the tides and walked away without getting in.
Fast forward another few weeks and with a little help from @Dmax a third attempt saw us at a locked door with seemingly no other way on site - little did we know at the time there was a gaping great big hole at the end of the building we could literally have walked in.
And finally on our 4th attempt, success. It was a long time coming. Explored with extreme_ironing and Till
We decided to head straight to the control room and then work from there. Even thou we knew where to look, it took us a few minutes to find the right staircase to get to it. The control room here had been modernised, but still had a bit of an old skool feel to it despite all the modern computer displays. Alas it was completely powered down now and the only light came from the end of the room which made it a bit awkward to photograph.
Then onto the turbine hall. There were 4 generating sets at Tilbury, but one of them looks to have been stripped down prior to closure. It was quite cool to see the turbine blades and the internals of the turbine all on display. It had clearly been like this for quite some time.
Yes I really liked the stripped down turbine!
Overhead shot of the whole turbine hall.
Coal loading floor where coal is fed to the boilers.
Boilers
The insides of one of the generators, this is what actually makes the electricity.
Towards the end of our visit, we decided get a bit more bold and see what lay in some of the other buildings. At one end of the station there was a largeish building that looked interesting. It turned out to be the water pumping and filtering plant. This was necessary at a station like this because the water used came directly out of the Thames.
It was filtered on its way in by 4 of these colossal rotary filters.
Inside the pumping station
And that was it. All in all we spend a whole day here and it was a day well spent.
The exit was pure comedy, ask me sometime and I'll tell you the full story, it's too much to write here. Needless to say I got very wet.
Thanks for looking!
Maniac.
Fast forward a few weeks, and myself and extreme_ironing came up with a plan, alas one major flaw in our plan, we forgot to check the tides and walked away without getting in.
Fast forward another few weeks and with a little help from @Dmax a third attempt saw us at a locked door with seemingly no other way on site - little did we know at the time there was a gaping great big hole at the end of the building we could literally have walked in.
And finally on our 4th attempt, success. It was a long time coming. Explored with extreme_ironing and Till
We decided to head straight to the control room and then work from there. Even thou we knew where to look, it took us a few minutes to find the right staircase to get to it. The control room here had been modernised, but still had a bit of an old skool feel to it despite all the modern computer displays. Alas it was completely powered down now and the only light came from the end of the room which made it a bit awkward to photograph.
Then onto the turbine hall. There were 4 generating sets at Tilbury, but one of them looks to have been stripped down prior to closure. It was quite cool to see the turbine blades and the internals of the turbine all on display. It had clearly been like this for quite some time.
Yes I really liked the stripped down turbine!
Overhead shot of the whole turbine hall.
Coal loading floor where coal is fed to the boilers.
Boilers
The insides of one of the generators, this is what actually makes the electricity.
Towards the end of our visit, we decided get a bit more bold and see what lay in some of the other buildings. At one end of the station there was a largeish building that looked interesting. It turned out to be the water pumping and filtering plant. This was necessary at a station like this because the water used came directly out of the Thames.
It was filtered on its way in by 4 of these colossal rotary filters.
Inside the pumping station
And that was it. All in all we spend a whole day here and it was a day well spent.
The exit was pure comedy, ask me sometime and I'll tell you the full story, it's too much to write here. Needless to say I got very wet.
Thanks for looking!
Maniac.
my oh my, great write up man 
