Explore #1 of ‘The Picnics & Palaces Tour’
In May I embarked on an epic week-long roadtrip through Eastern Germany and Poland in the great company of my usual exploring buddy James, his girlfriend Jade, and Dan of Mr Dan Explores fame.
After catching a 6am flight out of Stansted to Berlin, first stop on day one was this permission visit to a former coal-fired power station with a beautiful retro control room…
History (rewritten from wiki)
Built in 1927, Powerplant Plessa was one of the oldest coal-fired power stations in Europe. Following three main phases of further construction, output had peaked by 1942 at 54MW. This then decreased in the post-war era until the plant finally closed in April 1992.
In 1996 the plant became owned by the municipality of Plessa, and the plant reopened as a industrial heritage museum/cultural attraction in the early 21st century.
Our Explore
As we didn’t really speak much German and the lady who let us in didn’t speak any English we were left free to wander around and shoot as we pleased. This was the nice relaxing start to the trip we’d planned for after our early start that morning…
As always click on a photo to VIEW LARGE
Before we headed into the main plant building we grabbed a couple of shots of the old train which used to transport coal to the site…
And without further ado, the star attraction: that gorgeous control room.
I then headed to the side of the plant where the boilers were housed…
…the peeling remains of the boiler control panels.
A smaller control panel on the side of the turbine hall…
The large Siemens turbine housing.
It was time to go, but Dan and I sneaked into a small office at the end of a corridor which was usually off limits to visitors, and found this nice planning desk…
…and an old photo of it in use back in the day by ‘Operating Engineer’ Alexander Oppler.
Dan and I then went to join up with James and Jade outside, only to discover that the lady with the keys had assumed we’d already gone and had locked us in! Ensue much hilarity about it usually being difficult to find a way *into* our locations, not find a way *out* 🙂 A few minutes later the lady came back and released us. I will leave you with a final shot of that control room…
Thanks for visiting.
Adam X
5 comments
I have searched for a suitable picture of this power plant for my thesis and these were the best pictures I have found. Adam, thank you for allowing me to use the picture of the control room. Great photographs, really. Sonia
Thanks Sonia, you’re welcome!
thank’s a lot for the pictures, specially from my grandfather Alex Oppler
You’re welcome, and thanks for commenting!