The Power Station - Central Control Room

With the boilers and turbines having been conquered, it was time to make my way to the holy grail of this journey - the Central Control Room. The jewel of Inverkip Power Station, and a place regarded by some as one of the best urban explores in the UK, I was keen to make my way there. It was tricky at first, with many of the corridors being impassable, but a dim light and a strangely positioned door led me there via a "back route". What I saw was like something I had only seen in a movie.

I envisioned this to be the "supervisor" desk. I sat here and ate my lunch.

Shot with a wide angle Sigma 10-20 lens, the scale of the room is portrayed well here. The equipment was all disconnected, but the control panels would light up if you activated switches.

Fail all round.

As well as the Central Control Room, the central block in the heart of the station also contained other rooms. Some were paper chart stores, tool rooms full of every boys' toy imaginable, and even mess halls. There was also a telecommunications room, where the stations' PAX phone system was run from.

On a couple of trips here I'd hear the click-click-click noise of the telephone system picking up messages from within the station. I never did decide whether it was other explorers playing with the phones or just electrical interference causing the relays to occasionally activate.

This strange contraption appeared to be some kind of mobile phone or line testing device.

Not far from the central block were long rooms full of switchgear. Much of it was switched off and marked decommissioned, but there were still parts of it switched on and making the loudest 50Hz buzz I have ever heard.

A few times when I visited I slept in a room just to the side of the central control room, called the "Kipdas" room if I remember correctly. One part of it contained some old workstation computers and what could be called, in modern day terms servers. They were old tape reel machines - whether they worked in conjunction with the punch paper and telex machines, or separate to them I don't know.

These don't look too big, but they really were massive and took two of us just to shift them a little into position. We didn't try to power them on, but I wouldn't be surprised if they'd have fired right up.

These are the tape reel machines. Thankfully, before the station's eventual demolition, these were carted off to a museum somewhere for posterity. I keep meaning to visit one day and see what else got saved.

Next time: a more in depth history of the power station and photos of the impressive pipework, documentation and the demolition itself.