In today’s Urbandoned video, we are sharing
our 2019 exploration of the notorious Eggborough Power Station in Yorkshire that ceased operating
a year before our visit. The immense structure required a lot of care
to infiltrate with patrolling security and many cameras, but on a cold and rainy night,
we were able to make it inside and explore the site in its entirety. Containing everything that you would want
in an industrial site, all we could do was marvel at the towering premises, sat in eerie
silence. Join us as we see what remains within the
power station. This footage was captured a few hours before
our exploration began on a stormy night. As our entrance was difficult and lengthy,
we weren’t focusing on filming anything during it, so you next meet us inside the
facility after sunrise. Alistair: Holy sh**! Alistair: This place is obviously completely
amazing, but at the moment, we’re struggling to enjoy it as what we usually would, just
because of the weather and how cold we are. I don’t know if you can hear my voice, but
I’m literally shaking. My voice and all. It’s horrible, but yeah, this place is pretty
unbelievable, to be honest. It’s massive. If you couldn’t tell already, the footage
we exited the power station with wouldn’t be up to our standards nowadays. It definitely didn’t help with our ice cold,
shaky hands and lack of sleep after a night dedicated to making it inside, but we do apologise
that we could never capture the building as we would now. Hopefully, you can look past this and appreciate
that we felt it deserved to be shared, even with poor documentation. Alistair: ‘154ft.’ Jesus... We started trekking upwards in the boiler
house, a tremendous region of the structure standing at almost 300ft. Here, we would come across a mesh of coal-covered
machines and creaky walkways. Alistair: The pipes in this place are ridiculous. They go all throughout the facility and they’re
everywhere. All the walkways are obviously made so they
go under and over all the pipes and other bits of machinery. This place is completely full of tubes that
all connect together, I guess. Alistair: Holy sh**! Oh my god… Alistair: So, we’ve just seen this site
has many cooling towers and heading over to these windows, I suspect that we’ll get
a sighting of the chimney. It looks like we are. Oh my god! It is absolutely massive. Alistair: We’ve finally made it all the
way to the top of this building. Some of the boys are already here. Up on the roof at the peak of the generating
station besides the chimney, we could finally see the true scale of the goliath. It boasted eight cooling towers that dominated
the Yorkshire skyline for miles around. Eggborough first produced power in 1967 alongside
the nearby Ferrybridge Power Station which opened a few years earlier. Despite eventually having four units, it only
started with one and was officially opened when the fourth unit had been commissioned
in 1970. It became a recognisable staple for locals
in Knottingley where it resided, and for anyone else that would pass by, it’s massive complex
visible clearly on the relatively flat landscape. By 2007, 300 people were employed at the station
with a generating capacity of 1960 megawatts. It’s closure came shortly after, originally
planned in 2015, but delayed for a couple of years until a new gas-fired power station
was announced next door to replace it. On the 2nd February 2018, it was announced
that Eggborough would close by the coming September, but it was decomissioned only a
month later on March 23rd at 2am. Reece: I can’t complain, though. Alistair: To put into perspective how dirty
we got getting in here, Reece’s shoes were blue. Reece: They were blue. That is very true. Alistair: Mine were reddy-brown and what colour
were yours? Oli: I’m so cold! Alistair: He can’t even answer. Although that clip on the roof showed how
freezing, wet and dirty we were, the temperature was warming up steadily. Afterwards, we advanced to the area where
the facility’s conveyor belts meet the boiler house. Alistair: This is quite a cool design for
a conveyor belt that I’ve never seen before. Obviously, you’ve got this conveyor on the
top floor and then below, you’ve got more conveyors on the second floor and possibly
more on the floor beneath, it looks like, although, I can’t be sure. They all meet up at the end, as well, which
is pretty cool. We had been putting it off with doubts that
we might not be completely alone in the huge building, but as we grew in confidence, we
decided to head towards the turbine hall, aiming for its overhead gantry cranes initially,
to gauge whether there was anyone below us. Alistair: This crane is absolutely epic! I’m hoping that it shows up how big it is
on camera, but it’s huge. It would go all the way along the turbine
hall to repair the turbines. You can see the two claws, there, one slightly
bigger than the other to lift different weights. That is unbelievable! I never thought I’d see a place like this,
to be honest. Looking down at the turbines from the bulky
cranes and their cabins, we were amazed by their size and design. Without witnessing a security guard or worker
on the ground, it was only a matter of time before we found ourselves on their level. Alistair: We’re on the ground level with
the turbines now and it is pretty something. It actually just takes your breath away to
be honest. The scale of this one room and the amount
of effect it had on everyone that lived around it. It was an incredible sight to behold. These four 500 MW blue turbines were the base
of the entire structure, built to accommodate them and produce a total electrical output
just below 2000, enough electricity to power 2 million homes. Alistair: This is my most favourite turbine
yet, because all of it’s sides are exposed completely and you can see how much piping
and other stuff goes into getting it to work. It’s literally insane… There is so many little bits of machinery
that you never see a lot of the time, but it’s all on show, here. This place is like a museum, really. Working our way around the dusty turbine hall,
we were able to get close and personal to the fascinating machines that would take in
steam created in the boiler house and cause the generator to spin to produce electricity. The steam would be cooled, condensed back
into water and returned to the boiler through the maze of pipes below the turbines to repeat
the process over and over. Alistair: Look at all those storage boxes. I wonder what’s in them. They don’t look too old, to be fair. Must be some ongoing work, I guess. The only region we desperately wanted to see
now was the brains behind the entire operation, the control room. Boarded at its main entrance, it was clear
we would have to find a different way to reach it. Whilst searching, we would come into contact
with an array of offices, labs and staff rooms full of belongings. Nothing was reinstated elsewhere when the
property closed down, with some fairly expensive kit left neglected. Inevitably, after traversing through a switchroom,
we would reach the staircase that we were certain would lead us to our prize. Alistair: Holy sh**! Holy sh**! Holy sh**… what?! Our jaws dropped! In front us lied a spaceship-like room untouched
with blue panels that screamed 60s, the central control room of Eggborough Power Station. After the work put in to reach this very room,
we could finally breathe a sigh of relief and take it all in, knowing that the mission
was definitely worth it. Each corner of the room held an area for the
four units bending around the square layout, as well as engineering and station services. The other control desks for said facilities
occupied the trio of long panels in the middle. It wasn’t hard to feel the importance of
the control room whilst inside it’s walls. Over the decades, many have sat at the various
desks and watched as technology changed rapidly, yet the overall task for the plant remained
the same. It’s architecture has hardly changed however,
surprising because most power stations would simplify their panels and leave them requiring
one or two people. We could have kept wandering around the room,
gawking at the amazing panels, yet tired, drained and hungry, we figured it was time
to leave. Exploring Eggborough had been a special experience. It was the first time we had managed to infiltrate
a more modern power station and it was a treat to see one complete with an intact boiler
house, turbine hall, control room, cooling towers and chimney with no signs of demolition. The scale of the property was mind-blowing,
particularly noticeable in the turbine hall. It had felt weird to have such a vast site
totally to ourselves for the six hours we were inside. On our way out, we turned to see the place
we had just visited and traipsed away in awe. Unfortunately for Eggborough, it’s lack
of demolition didn’t last long. Works began in 2020 with the cooling towers
coming down first and have progressed all the way until now, as the chimney and boiler
house has crumbled to the ground. Little remains now, and the seemingly permanent
image of the power station on the Yorkshire horizon has been erased forever. Here are some of our photographs captured
at the abandoned power station. If you like the look of them, check out our
Instagram page in the description, where we share images of our explores months before
they are seen on YouTube. Thanks for watching! Remember to tune in to the live streams we
will be doing the day after every episode in the evening, where we can discuss our explorations
in more detail and answer any questions. See you next time!
