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Coal fired Power Stations

Discussion in 'Everything Else Heritage' started by Allegheny, Sep 19, 2024.

  1. Allegheny

    Allegheny Member

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    I've been reading that the last UK coal fired power station is due to close. I'm wondering if anything is being done to preserve some of the heritage of this highly significant industry.
     
  2. The Green Howards

    The Green Howards Nat Pres stalwart

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    Admittedly it was over twenty years ago when I was there, but there was an impressive display of heavy electrical machinery at MOSI in Manchester - I assume the link being Ferranti.

    Trouble is... turbines are *big*. There's stuff at Battersea, perhaps?
     
  3. hyboy

    hyboy New Member

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    Hopefully at least one or two of those elegant landmark cooling towers. We would miss them if they were all demolished.
     
  4. ghost

    ghost Part of the furniture

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    I really hope you are being sarcastic...
     
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  5. The Green Howards

    The Green Howards Nat Pres stalwart

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    I'm trying to imagine the cost of maintaining one and keeping them safe. Locally there was a plan to keep one of the brickyard chimneys as part of a heritage centre to commemorate the industrial history of the area, but it was quietly dropped one day: probably for similar reasons.
     
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  6. Bikermike

    Bikermike Well-Known Member

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  7. ghost

    ghost Part of the furniture

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    I didn't mention their looks (although I find them brutal and ugly).
    I was more thinking of the horrendous cost of maintaining them as also mentioned by @The Green Howards

    The author of the Guardian article speaks very romantically of the towers and shows a picture of a family having a picnic in the shadow of 4 towers and a power station. Now let's be realistic - how many families are likely to do that? I would say it ranges from zero to maybe 5 at a push.
    Is the author and the 20th Century Society prepared to stump up the hundreds of thousands of pounds (maybe into the millions) to maintain even a couple of towers into the future? I'm guessing probably not, but they'd really like the Government to stump up the cash...
     
  8. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    Possibly not. But those are arguments that have gone for a lot of historical buildings.

    I remember eating in a hotel in Telford, and looking down over the top of Ironbridge Gorge towards the power station. Those cooling towers looked alien yet also an important part of what made the area what it was.

    Their loss is about more than the purely economic value.
     
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  9. RLinkinS

    RLinkinS Member

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    There is very little at Battersea other than than the building and one control room. The display at MOSI was better. It would be difficult to preserve a power station in such a way that would allow people to understand what they did and what it was like to work in one

    Sent from my SM-A105FN using Tapatalk
     
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  10. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    I remember going round Richborough Power Station aged about 10. At that age and level of knowledge of physics, I struggled to grasp how the big machines in front of me actually turned water into electricity.
     
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  11. The Green Howards

    The Green Howards Nat Pres stalwart

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    I have a friend who used to work in one near Retford: one of his safety inductions pointed out that if you saw a cloud of 'steam' (read: water vapour) a few feet away from a pipe, then for heaven's sake don't walk between that pipe and where the cloud of steam was unless you wanted to be cut in two... as it indicated a high pressure leak of steam from one of the turbine pipes.
     
  12. The Green Howards

    The Green Howards Nat Pres stalwart

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  13. pmh_74

    pmh_74 Well-Known Member

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    I grew up near Ratcliffe-on-Soar and that block of 8 cooling towers, visible for miles around, is such a local landmark that I always feel like I'm "nearly home" when I see them (even though I no longer live near there). I too would be sorry to see them go. As a child, when visiting my Grandparents, we must have passed half a dozen coal-fired power stations on a 50 mile journey. All gone now, except that one. Surely one should be kept as a monument to that particular era?
    Note I said 'should'. I am less certain about 'could' for the reasons others have mentioned.
     
  14. 5944

    5944 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Last coal was delivered by rail to Radcliffe on 28th June 2024. GBRf had the honours of transporting it from Immingham.

    Incidentally, last use of proper MGRs ie. HAA wagons was in August 2010. One minute they're everywhere, next they've all gone. At least a few survive in preservation, mainly at Chasewater Railway.
     
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  15. Greenway

    Greenway Part of the furniture

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    To see coal trains - large ones - the place to go is The Powder River Basin in Wyoming. ;)

    [​IMG]
     
  16. The Green Howards

    The Green Howards Nat Pres stalwart

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    For me, "nearly home" was the brickyard chimneys on the approach to Peterborough.
     
  17. Allegheny

    Allegheny Member

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    On the subject of safety, a few years ago I attended a health & safety presentation given by the MD of the company I was working for. He mentioned that, at the time the cooling towers were being built, the average was one fatality per 100 feet of height of each tower.
     

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