A few days after my very wet first visit, we returned in blazing sunshine for a second potter about – even took a packed lunch this time…
The very dry atmosphere and no scavengers means dead pigeons just fossilise:
A pair of giant flues:
A plumbing diagram of this place must be incredible:
Looking down one of the open spaces:
And looking even further down – we were standing on the 56.5m level, and that red floor is on the 4m level.
The roof is much more pleasant in the sunshine (and without a police boat buzzing about):
And all the way down to the ground floor:
The controls for an overhead hoist:
In the laboratory area, there are lots of taps for sampling water from different parts of the plant:
The only plants we found inside the building seem to like sulphuric acid:
Up onto the gantry, we felt very exposed – especially as those radiators on the turbine floor had an inspection note less than a month old on them:
I climbed up into one of the crane cabs:
And walked along the crane to a view down into the turbine hall:
Searching for the control room, we found the battery backup rooms:
Unfortunately the control room itself was securely locked up:
I tried stitching a panorama on the roof – a strange result, but quite cool 
And from the gantry, two of the turbines:
All images:
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Great to see pics of the 2 Overhead cranes. They were built by Clark Chapmans of Carlisle where I was a young fitter working on their assembly. They were the longest cranes ever built in our factory (100ft) and I was sent out to Inverkip just after they were assembled on site to check out the long travel motors and gear box asslemblies. The roof of the turbine house was still not in place and the crazy painters were just shuffling along the steel work as they painted. (No elf-n-safety in those days!!). I think that was about 1971-72 and I’ve never been back so its a nice surprise to see pics.
Interesting – yes, I’ve seen other pictures of workers doing things that definitely wouldn’t be allowed nowadays. It might examine how three (I think) people were killed during the construction.
Fantastic pics
As a 6th year pupil at Greenock Academy painted a large mural for the entrance hall with 2 of my peers.
Great website fascinating projects
Can I suggest lighthouses visited Ailsa Craig and Wee Cumbrae when in Kilmarnock sub aqua club
Dramatic locations and abandoned machinery , domestic detritous of former inhabitants wee cumbrae had 3 airplane seats bizzarely abandoned in one of the sitting rooms
Ailsa Craig has granite quarrying equipment and two abandoned fog horn structures
Keep up the good work.