UER Store order your copy of Access All Areas today! Activity 592 online Server Time: 2024-04-19 01:34:54 Visit Infiltration Access All Areas AvBrand

1 2 3   UER Forum > Archived US: Mid-Atlantic > Old King Coal (Viewed 3830 times) DJ Craig  Moderator Location: Johnson City, TN Gender: Male Break the Silence  |  |  |  Old King Coal < on 3/20/2009 9:30 AM >   My parents have always known about my exploring and been interested in it. Recently I convinced them to come with me exploring for the first time. I took them, The_Only_Ole and a local non-UER explorer to one of my favorite industrial locations, a coal power plant. My mom is a historian, so she was interested in the historical aspect of the building. My dad has a bachelors in engineering and also used to be a hobbyist mechanic. Both of them were the children of engineers. They absolutely loved the trip. My dad is a photographer so he took the pictures, and my mom wrote a story about the trip. I told them I'd post the story and photos on here. All of these pictures are my dads except for the first one; I used one of JC's pictures that I found on UER because I really wanted an exterior shot and didn't have any. If you know the location, please don't post it since this thread is public and this building is my baby. PM me if you want to. Yesterday I went to hell on earth. It lies right behind a shopping mall busy where people were rushing to finish their shopping between showers while others put timber for their latest home construction project into their cars. Did they ever think to look up and see the huge old brick building with hundreds of broken windows towering behind the them, just a stone's throw away? Do they wonder about the six giant chimney stacks that rise 6 stories up over the mall parking lot? Or has it been there so long that they no longer see it? We stood together inside the building, disorientated in the inky dark of the one hundred year old building and fumbling for our flashlights. After our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we found ourselves in a long high-ceilinged entrance hall with a large two storied garage door 100 yards away at the other end. Using our flashlights, we made our way towards this door which was showing some sunlight filtering in around the edges and stood out as a beacon in the darkness. About half-way along, we came to a stairway and climbed up to the first floor. Immediately we were amongst the furnaces of a coal-fired power station, built in about 1905 and last used in the 1990s. There were steel-mesh walkways and stairways everywhere we looked. As we went upwards towards the second floor, we saw giant-sized steel hoppers for coal or ash storage, a confusion of pipes, conduits, conveyers and electrical wiring that seemed to dwarf us everywhere we looked. Most of it was rusted, dirty and in a chaotic state of disrepair. Using only the thin beam of the flashlight, we continued upwards through the huge halls and amongst the hoppers and furnaces that seemed to be too big for this giant building. Often we had to squeeze past them through gaps only just wide enough for us when we turned sideways. It was still raining steadily, and in places the rain was coming through the broken roof with a steady drip. Years of this damp was rotting the wooden flooring and rusting the steel stairways and walkways on which we were standing. As we stepped gingerly along them, we could see through the gaps in their mesh-like structure to the many floors below. We held tightly to the rails and hoped the structure would hold us. So that there was not too much weight on each stretch of walkway, we kept a six foot gap between each of us just in case. There were windows all the way up the side of the building, and the light filtered through the broken panes so at least in some places, we could see where we were going. In other places, away from the windows, all we had was the puny light from our flashlight which we shone at our feet to kept a sharp eye on the fragile structure ahead. A step was completely missing on one stairwell but other than that, we found the steel mesh, though rusting, was holding up well. At last we reached the top of the building, and found an old wooden door which led us out on to the roof. What a relief to be out in the daylight and pouring rain on that roof. Six rusting chimney stacks towered over us as we made our way through the long grass and brambles that were thriving on the neglected roof. Two Canada geese eyed us warily as we came closer to their nest site up amongst the chimneys. The rain poured down on us but it was a relief to wash the gritty coal dust from our eyes, face and clothes. It was even in my mouth as I could feel it crunching in my teeth. As the rain came down even harder, we looked for the small wooden door that would lead us back into the power plant. We closed it behind us and started to descent the frail-looking steel stairs back to the top floor of the building. Having come up through the four stories of the power plant quite rapidly, we resolved to descend at a slower pace to photograph it and try to work out how it all worked. The top floor was like a mezzanine attic with a lower ceiling than the rest of the plant, but still 30 to 40 feet above us. The entire length of it, at least 100 yards long, was the top of the huge, building-sized steel coal hopper. There was no concrete floor as on the other floors, just the fragile steel-mesh walkway which ran suspended in midair for the entire length. We walked slowly and gingerly down the length of it, peering at places into the two or three-story high coal hopper. Through the mesh at our feet, we could just see in the beam of our flashlights to the bottom of the rusting hopper below us. There was still a small amount of coal left in the hopper, ready for the next day's firing-up that never happened. A huge conveyor belt ran down the center to bring the coal into the room and dump it into the iron hopper. The iron walkway with handrails ran along beside the conveyer, with access points to allow maintenance along its length. There were switch boxes to control the speed and a large, well marked emergency stop button. There was also a large "Men Working" notice to be put on the switch when men were working on the conveyor so that they would not be precipitated into the hopper if someone switched it on while they were standing on it. About half way down the room, there was a single wooden chair sitting against the inside wall in a tiny alcove in the iron walkway. The chair which was very aptly named by one of our intrepid party as "Old King Coal's Throne" was foam-padded, although missing its cover, and had a carved semi-circular-shaped wooden chair-back. It was in a central place overlooking the conveyor and within easy reach of the controls. A well-worn broom lay in retirement in the gloom beside it. The chair and the floor in the tiny space around it, like the rest of the building, was filthy with coal dust. It looked relatively comfortable but in this case, looks were deceiving indeed. What kind of hell-hole would this have been when the furnaces and conveyors were in operation? The heat rising from the six furnaces below would have been intense while in summer, the sun would be beating on the roof above as well. As the coal came in on the conveyor and was dumped into the hopper one story below, clouds of choking coal dust would fill the cavernous space around him. Coal dust still permeated everything, even now, ten years after the plant had last been shut off. Fifty yards away, at each end of the building were a few windows with broken panes that threw some daylight in but not enough to light up much more than a few yards into the long gloomy interior and we relied on our flashlights to see where we were going. There were several huge fans lying broken near the windows. These must have been a puny attempt to bring air in from outside and was the only evidence of any attempt to reduce the heat and dust. King Coal, as he sat on his solitary throne through the long day or night would have had a black face like a coal miner as he sat there in the intense heat. Since there was only one such chair on the entire floor, we can assume he was quite alone in this hell on earth. With the noise of the long mechanical conveyor, the crashing of the coal as it fell and the huge roar of the furnaces below, all conversation would have been impossible in any case. What must it have been like to go down the four flights of stairs at the end of a shift, to go out into the cool night air and breathe the pure air, go for a solitary walk along the nearby river, or sit on the narrow balcony or the cafeteria to eat his lunch and chat with his friends? He and all his colleagues that took one of the shifts on the top floor would have died an early death from dust in his lungs. He suffered through each day and ultimately gave his life to earn his living and support his family. These conditions continued for nearly one hundred years in this place and during that time, hundreds of men must have suffered through their working life. In sadness we began to descend the narrow mesh stairs to the floor below us. It suddenly hit me as I carefully descended that steep stairway that the great strides of industrial progress made during the past centuries was not without great sacrifice by a few. When a process like coal-fired electricity generation was first invented on a large scale like this, the engineers were intent on the science and engineering problems they faced and spared little thought for the health and safety of the workers. Over the following decades, the engineers worked slowly on all the hazards and problems, one issue at a time, until finally the modern air-conditioned noise-controlled coal plant of today, where men could work without risking their lives or sanity, was finally developed. The intrepid pioneers of plants like this were an essential part of the entire industrial development process that lead to modern civilization as we know it. On the next floor down, feeling like Lilliputians in the land of Oz, we wandered the full length of the building amongst the top parts of the two or three-storied beehive-shaped furnaces set in the concrete floor in a long row. Walking on the solid concrete floor was a relief after the aerial walkways on the floor above. Daylight shone down on us from a wall of broken-paned windows along the entire outside wall of the cavernous hall so we could at least see where we were going. The concrete sides of the furnaces were smashed in places with insulation, probably asbestos, spewing out all over the floor. Other than this, the whole floor was relatively clean and swept. In several areas, we had to avoid puddles where the rain was coming in through holes in the roof two stories up. It was on this floor that the air was injected into the furnaces to feed the hungry flames inside. We found a gathering of three foot high, very thick steel injection nozzles, looking like a battery of depth charges left over from the Second World War. About twenty of them stood on the floor in an abandoned huddle beside the furnace. Electrical pumps and switches to feed the air to the nozzles were standing in various stages of decay throughout the entire floor. Air was pumped through large enclosed vents cut into the sides of the building, through shafts and injected into the furnace through the nozzles. We found the stairwell to take us down to the floor below. It went down in two levels with more steel walkways and subsidiary staircases to give access to the sides of the giant furnaces and their various hatches and controls. These hatches were bolted in place but very rusty. Then suddenly, near the bottom of the stairwell, we saw the long row of furnace bases marching across the hall in front of us. Each furnace had a large access hole for feeding the coal coming down from the hopper two stories above. There was a tall and narrow, one story high metal cart which was moved along the floor in front of the furnaces to funnel the coal into each furnace in turn. Once we were down on the floor and after closer examination, we saw that there was a scale system on the cart so that a measured weight of coal could be added to each furnace. As each furnace was filled with coal, the motorized cart was then moved to the next furnace. There was room for the human operator to stand on the moving cart, measuring the coal dropping into the funnel. Once he was satisfied with the quantity, a series of levers allowed him to release the coal down a shoot and into the white-hot furnace towering in front of him. The operator was so close to the furnace that the heat would have been extremely intense. This would have been another job from hell. Apart from the heat and roar of all the furnaces, the air he breathed would be filled with coal dust. Coal lumps were most likely constantly falling on him as they spilled out of the shoot and funnel above him. We could see through the small inspection hatches still open in some of the furnaces. The bases were filled with a thick layer of grey ash from the last burning. Although we could not see how, the ash must have been dropped out through the bottom of the furnace to the ground floor below. There was a huge hopper on the ground floor, most likely the receptacle for this hot ash. Once it was cooled, the ash would have been taken away and this may have been the reason for the large truck-sized garage door we had seen when we first entered the building. In any case this huge quantity ash would have had to be disposed of somewhere, causing an environmental nightmare wherever it was placed. After one hundred years of operation, this represents a mountain of ash containing heavy metals and many other unknown pollutants. We wandered amongst the furnaces and soon realized that behind them, there were a maze of large steam pipes with their insulation painted in bright colors, perhaps as a warning that they were hot. Some of the pipes must have brought cold water to the furnaces while other took the steam away. We assumed that the bulging furnaces, which were certainly a lot larger on the outside than they were in the inside, must have had a hollow jacket into which the cold water was fed to create the steam. It must have taken a lot of trial and error before this process could be carried out safely without any explosions and the resulting deadly steam escapes. As the water heated, the pressure created would have been enormous. At the end of the room was a large double door which opened out onto an outside balcony. Sitting on the balcony was a large tank, which may have been the supply of cool water used to make steam. It would have to be cooled before it could be recycled back to the furnaces. There was just space on that deck for a few chairs where the workers had obviously enjoyed going for a breath of fresh air during their breaks. There was also a large cafeteria with locker rooms for both men and woman on the ground floor. We did not see any bathrooms on any of the other floors although we may have missed them in the gloom. Walking under the steam pipes, we went through a door and into a 'clean' room. In contrast to the furnace area behind us, this room was light and airy, with even the remnants of carpeting still on the floor. Set into the floor along the full length of the floor were a series of huge power generators which were fed with the steam from next door, Behind them again was a long panel of electrical gauges, most still in place, which measured the electricity coming from the generators as it went out to the transmission wires. One generator at the far end had been abandoned in a dismantled state, presumably for maintenance or repair. Just in front of the generators was a padded telephone booth with the two telephone, one cream and one red, still sitting there. Power generators scream loudly during full operation and any conversation or phone calls would have been impossible except in this sound-proof booth. At the far end of the room were three, glass-walled offices and a filing room. This would be the office for the plant manager and engineers. There was a large table in the center of the room in the first office where plans of the equipment could be laid out when maintenance or repairs of equipment were being planned. The room at the far end was a workshop although most of the equipment, such as lathes had been removed. From here we took the stairs back down to the ground floor where we had entered. There were no windows on this floor so it was pitch-dark and airless. Since we knew the building contained large quantities of asbestos insulation which was broken in many places, we had brought respirators which filtered the air we breath. Without the ventilation of the upper floors, we now needed to don them as we explored this floor. There were several rooms off to one side and we used our flashlights to probe their inky depths. We opened the door of a long room which contained racks of insulators which carried the electricity from the generators on the floor above. From here it left the building and went up to the transmission lines. Another room nearby held a bank of about 100 battery cells, perhaps for an emergency power supply to allow the staff to continue to monitor the furnaces during a power outage and to be able to safely use the stairways and walkways in the dark. Without electrical lighting, the plant would have been a deadly place to try negotiate. The battery bank had been left in what was probably a dangerous state, with fluids, heavy metals and deadly hydrogen gas in an explosive state. We closed the door and made a hasty retreat, thinking for the umpteenth time, that someone needed to come and clean up this mess. There was a stairway to the basement but we decided not to go down because the stairwell was broken away for the last third of the way into the inky darkness below. It was time to leave and we could see our small escape hatch glowing at the end of the entrance hall. We removed our respirators and crawled out into the bright daylight again. It was amazing to breathe the biting cold wind and feel the clean rain on our faces. We walked out through the long grass, dodging the industrial debris and a dilapidated shed as we went. The grass was rapidly reclaiming the expansive parking lot beside the plant. Nature could probably reclaim the grounds outside unaided but there is no way it is going to penetrate the concrete and brick monster we had just left, with its tons of steel plant and machinery, its pollutants of coal dust, asbestos and heavy metals. Many people made a lot of money over the hundred or so years that this plant had operated. It made me very angry to think that these wealthy industrialists had been allowed to abandon this mess for someone else to clean up, having reaped the benefits and made their fortunes. Some of the ex-owners are still alive, living in retirement on the money they made while the taxpayer and the US government is left to clean up some time in the future. Anyone building huge factories and power plants like this should be compelled to contribute to a fund throughout the life of the plant so it can be kept specifically to clean up the mess when they leave the scene. If this was the only site like this, it would be bad enough. But this industrial complex alone has 3 or 4 other abandoned buildings like this while filthy industrial sites all over the planet are being similarly abandoned as soon as they are no longer needed. We only have one planet and we should not be treating it this way. "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go..." -Dr. Suess tick  Location: Abingdon, VA Gender: Male  |  |  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 1 on 3/20/2009 11:11 AM >   Wow, you weren't shitting me about that place... it looks awesome. femaledragonx  Location: Detroit & Everywhere Else I can dream up to go to The singularity is near  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 2 on 3/20/2009 1:03 PM >   wow, awesome that you brought your parents. i never got to bring my dad exploring, and wish i could have done so. nice story. nice shots. "Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd." -Bertrand Russell "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." ~Annie Dillard JC  Location: Augusta Georgia Gender: Male Keying up @ KJ4ZNR  |  |  |  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 3 on 3/20/2009 1:51 PM >   Great story DJ, Im glad to see that this place is still in relatively good condition. JC Keying up at KJ4ZNR <a href="http://www.r...e/southernshutter?> Coley  Location: Johnson City, TN Gender: Female We are Americans, nothing if not colonizers, and explorers. We can be retrosplorers! -on Euro UE  |  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 4 on 3/20/2009 1:58 PM >   I bet my mom would go if she could. At least she gave us a location. I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them. -Susan Sontag Soldat  Location: Philadelphia, PA Gender: Male The Mayor of Noobtown  |  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 5 on 3/20/2009 4:07 PM >   You win. This is quite an impressive place. PorkChopExpress  Location: Pled's Pig Farm, Virginia Gender: Male Stand Up Philosopher  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 6 on 3/20/2009 4:13 PM >   Great stuff DJ! This is what a family outing should be like! "Deep in the human psyche there lies the need to believe in something fantastic, something powerful, something unknown." "Touch what you cannot solve, and return to me. I'll give you hints, and I'll give you three..." Zork Nemesis "I eat asbestos and piss PCBs." Drooldog  Gender: Male  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 7 on 3/20/2009 6:57 PM >   and yet we wandered this place at like 1am with red light flashlights...Creepy and probably not the safest thing to do. germs  Location: Great Barrington, MA Gender: Male the coolest koala on uer.  |  |  |  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 8 on 3/21/2009 12:15 AM >   What an amazing post! The story is fun, and the pictures are beautiful. Funny that you went with your parents, but they really added a lot to the post. This is one of the best posts I've ever seen here. Thanks to you and your folks. UniqueStyle  Gender: Male  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 9 on 3/21/2009 1:13 AM >   Posted by germs What an amazing post! The story is fun, and the pictures are beautiful. Funny that you went with your parents, but they really added a lot to the post. This is one of the best posts I've ever seen here. Thanks to you and your folks. What more can be said. The FNG  Location: Lurking in the mountains Gender: Male Whoops, didn't see that on the way in.  |  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 10 on 3/21/2009 1:53 AM >   Great stuff man! evan-e-cent  Gender: Male  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 11 on 3/21/2009 4:17 AM >   I think she has captured the essence of urban exploring and photography. In addition to the excitement of discovery of uncharted territory and the challenges they bring, there is the rediscovery of the past, documenting it in photographs and better still thinking about its significance to the past, present and future. And especially thinking about the people who lived their lives in these places. [last edit 3/21/2009 4:44 PM by evan-e-cent - edited 1 times] DevilC  Location: Washington, District of Corruption Gender: Male I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their views.  |  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 12 on 3/21/2009 2:15 PM >   Nice find. That place is gorgeous. Since it is so nice and so close to commercial properties . . . it will likely be gone soon. Go shoot it some more. Science flies you to the Moon. Religion flies you into tall buildings. DJ Craig  Moderator Location: Johnson City, TN Gender: Male Break the Silence  |  |  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 13 on 3/21/2009 3:15 PM >   Posted by Drooldog and yet we wandered this place at like 1am with red light flashlights...Creepy and probably not the safest thing to do. lol I love that place at night! I go there at night all the time. Posted by DevilC Nice find. That place is gorgeous. Since it is so nice and so close to commercial properties . . . it will likely be gone soon. Go shoot it some more. As far as I know, there are no plans to do anything with the building. Quite a few companies, including the city government, have looked into buying the property but they have all found the cost of the cleanup to be way too high. "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go..." -Dr. Suess DevilC  Location: Washington, District of Corruption Gender: Male I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their views.  |  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 14 on 3/21/2009 3:17 PM >   Stimulus money d00d. There is suddenly BILLIONS for SuperFund cleanup. Posted by DJ Craig As far as I know, there are no plans to do anything with the building. Quite a few companies, including the city government, have looked into buying the property but they have all found the cost of the cleanup to be way too high. Science flies you to the Moon. Religion flies you into tall buildings. belleZ  Location: knoxville, tn Gender: Female free the wm3!  |  |  |  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 15 on 3/21/2009 5:16 PM >   i love this place. <3 “What you might see as depravity is, to me, just another aspect of the human condition.” - A.Argento edwin  Location: All Ova Gender: Male  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 16 on 3/21/2009 8:40 PM >   Craig, I love this place. JC and I got the chance to do it about 2 years ago and I'll never forget the puddle of mercury on the floor. There's a lot of cleanup to do there. click to view click to view djdrew  Location: Raleigh, NC Gender: Male -=djdrew=-  |  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 17 on 3/21/2009 10:57 PM >   Nice man! Looks really cool. -=djdrew=- evan-e-cent  Gender: Male  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 18 on 3/22/2009 1:21 AM >   Edwin, those B&W photos are great especially the under side of the coal hoppers where the coal is weighed out and loaded into the furnaces. DJ Craig  Moderator Location: Johnson City, TN Gender: Male Break the Silence  |  |  |  Re: Old King Coal <Reply # 19 on 3/22/2009 5:19 AM >   Posted by evan-e-cent Edwin, those B&W photos are great especially the under side of the coal hoppers where the coal is weighed out and loaded into the furnaces. evan-e-cent is my dad, by the way. Posted by edwin Craig, I love this place. JC and I got the chance to do it about 2 years ago and I'll never forget the puddle of mercury on the floor. There's a lot of cleanup to do there. Great pictures! And it's insane that you would mention the puddle of mercury. Right around the time that you made that post, I was there for only about the millionth time taking some pictures with some friends and I saw what I thought was solder on the ground. Attempting to pick it up turned out not to be such a good idea lol "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go..." -Dr. Suess UER Forum > Archived US: Mid-Atlantic > Old King Coal (Viewed 3830 times) 1 2 3   All content and images copyright © 2002-2024 UER.CA and respective creators. Graphical Design by Crossfire. To contact webmaster, or click to email with problems or other questions about this site: UER CONTACT View Terms of Service | View Privacy Policy | Server colocation provided by Beanfield This page was generated for you in 125 milliseconds. Since June 23, 2002, a total of 738454382 pages have been generated.