Urban Exploring - Hobby of yours?

[kts]

Id love to know the story behind that powerstation. How do these places get like this? Surely somebody most own them.

The power plant I posted photos from the other day was part of a large steel mill. The exhaust from the mill was used to spin the turbines of the power plant which in turn was used to power the mill.

The mill closed down in the 1980s or so, which is when a lot of the steel industry was in decline and the large integrated mills were being replaced by mini-mills or were replaced by cheaper production outside of the more developed parts of the world.

The former mill has since been partially turned into a museum, the power plant one day will be turned into part of the museum as well once the museum has more funding to properly convert it.

It's pretty cool how in Europe (especially Germany) they turn most old steel mills, coal mines, power plants, etc into museums. Often time they are open gate and you have free reign of the place with little to no supervision and often with no fences or gates to keep you out of anything. It's a shame, thanks to the litigious nature of the US, that we don't have more of that here.

[kts]

kts' European Vacation, part 5

In my last tale I mentioned how we headed off to parts unknown. I
forgot that before we arrived at our hotel we tried to take shots of
one more location, a train station depo that is home ton a ton of
abandoned trains. Due to the very, very long drive I was beat so I
ended up taking a nap inside the car while hobos and rail yard workers
walked past my car ignoring me while mANVIL and msb took photos of
trains.

Trains suck.

The following morning we woke up early yet again to see some pretty
famous forges, the Forges De Clabecq. Under going the world's slowest
demolition since 2008 or maybe before it looks like they are finally
going to be gone soon, if they aren't already. dsankt went there a
few months before we did and comparing his photos to ours a lot of the
place has been demolished in the 6 months or so between his visit and
ours.

In fact someone got this pretty nifty video of the first blast furnace
being demolished here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcKgobric9M

A very cool place to finally see with my own eyes. We apparently got
there during an early morning lunch break since maybe 45 minutes into
our visit the site roared up with activity again from the rally
driving security guard to a ton of workers moving heavy machinery all
over the place. We tried to keep ourselves hidden and then made our
exit having missed a large part of the facility closer to where the
demo work was going on.















After getting my fancy UE polo shirt caught on the fence here and
tearing a big hole in the back of it we headed off for a fun drive
through the country which eventually landed us at a large (compared to
the rest of the town around it) brewery. While the neighborhood was
packed with what looked to be a large turkish population somehow we
fit in naturally with our pale skin and tripods. They ignored us as
we walked past the open gate and into a complex that looks like it
could be used for a WW2 film set.



So many glorious bottles








He hit the road for more sites and had a few failures. Lots of
activity, freshly boarded/welded doors and windows and a few wrong
directions from the GPS. As it was getting dark we hit up our last
spot, a large hospital complex where at times it was hard to tell what
was abandoned and what was active. Being tired and lazy we took a
look at a few of them sans tripods and then headed out. After seeing
some photos from inside of these places I wish we had explored them a
bit more and taken photos. All I got was this one exterior.



With darkness coming we headed back to Chateau Formule 1 where we
cleaned up and headed off to Chez Doner Kebab to have the best meal
ever and laugh with the owner of the place who found it hysterical
that 3 guys from the US would keep coming back to his Doner Kebab
place.

[homegrone30]

I wish we had more old abandoned structures in Austin this seems like a good time.

[payney8]

Id love to know the story behind that powerstation. How do these places get like this? Surely somebody most own them.

[Peterkaczynski]

some really great photos here

[STAGGERED M3]

3 different places. Paint Factory. Prison. Battery Factory.




I can watermark it and send the high res?




Well duh... I hadn't been there so I was exploring :)

DINAN can I have a high res pic as well? Thanks

[der affe]

I googled it and ended up at a site for the sub base at balaclava in the ukrane, weird.

[kts]

Kts, is the terre rouge a submarine base?

It looks like that from the bottom. It was an iron ore furnace. The bottom level there I assume used to flow hot molten iron. It has since flooded and thus the river of water slowing moving through it and it looking like a submarine base.

Terre rouge translates to red earth which I guess fits this place with the iron ore.

[kts]

kts' European Vacation, part 4

After the random after hours rave party woke us up at our last
location we all tried to get a little bit more sleep before our 5am
wake up call. Still extremely groggy we headed out at 5am to our
first stop which was a short drive away.

That stop was Chateau Noisy. I've seen tons of photos of it and I
have wanted to go see it for years and now I was finally getting my
chance. Bartje was pretty tired from all the driving and had been to
Noisy a few times so he decided to sleep in his car while Martino lead
us up the path into Noisy. It was around this time I learned one of
my favorite exploring phrases, "The Belgian Fence". No it's not some
bizarre sex act, it's a fence that only goes around the front of a
building, or part of a path. They are all over Belgium. I don't know
if fences are bought on an installment plan over there or if they
think that just fencing off the front of a building will keep people
out but we saw "Belgian fences" all over the place in Belgium and
Noisy was no different. To make people stop dead in their tracks
along the path to Noisy someone installed a 10 foot section of fence
in the middle of the path. Instead of keeping people out they now
just have to walk a few feet to the right or left of the fence to get
around it.

After we got around the super hard fence of death we had fun getting
up the super hard hill of death and rising out of the early morning
fog we got our first view of Noisy.



Inside it was more trashed and collapsing in on itself that I would
have thought. A sad state of affairs inside.













I had a fun time climbing up the missing stairs of death to get to the
top of the clocktower to take in the view. The only thing more fun
than the way up was the way down.


The view


We heard a lot of noise and thought it might be the caretaker of the
place but fortunately it turned out to just be a bunch of French
explorers.

One last look before heading out


From there we made the long drive to Luxembourg to meet up with
another explorer. We met up with them and headed off into Germany.
Upon reaching the German border our Luxembourg friends took off on the
autobahn in their Audi S6 wagon. Bartje in his pretty fast Volvo also
took off. Myself in my lowly rented Skoda could not keep up and I
lost them. A quick phone call and several minutes of waiting by the
road side for the faster cars and I was able to catch up. Eventually
we made our way to a recently closed down hospital. Tons of stuff
were still inside and the place still had power. Unlock the doors and
it could be taking in patients.

Sterile










We had fun playing doctor in here for a little while.


After we got our fill of photos and pretending to be doctors we headed
off to a pretty large power plant that is part of a larger complex.
Taggers and scrappers have had a go at the place but it was still
pretty cool and somewhat intact.












We finished up and it was the end of a long weekend of exploring. We
had hit 4 different countries on this Sunday alone. Our Luxembourg
friends headed home as did Bartje and Martino. This left us in the
middle of nowhere with no idea what we were going to do next. We
picked a direction and headed to parts unknown to find a hotel and
figure out what we would explore the following day. About 30 minutes
into the drive mANVIL and msb passed out leaving me to try to stay
awake for the 2+ hour drive to where we eventually found a hotel.

[der affe]

Kts, is the terre rouge a submarine base?

[Vtec?lol]

One of the best threads

[FCB_M3]

I dont get out much.. Gaming a hobby? lol

[kts]

This thread delivers. I did this for a while and I'd post pictures up but I stupidly deleted all of my shit on my external harddrive yesterday. I almost cried. Oh well.... more adventures soon.

http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/

Best $29 I ever spent. As long as you haven't overwritten the photos that program will recover all of them.

You can download the free version to see what it finds before you sell out the $ for the full version.

And the Europe stories are awesome!

Thanks! I'm finally editing the last 2 days of photos (11 and 12) so expect a few more posts. :)

[A_Whelan]

This thread delivers. I did this for a while and I'd post pictures up but I stupidly deleted all of my shit on my external harddrive yesterday. I almost cried. Oh well.... more adventures soon.

And the Europe stories are awesome!

[tom d]

when i was a kid there was a closed nike missile site close to my home, complete with missile launchers. i was able to spent a lot time there before the vandals got a hold of it.