tarboat's photos with the keyword: ratcliffe-on-soar

With the closure of the UKs last coal burning power station this is a look back to when it was still hard at work.

I went for a last look at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station before it closes at the end of the month and was largely confounded by the weather. Over two days it was so murky and foggy that it proved almost impossible to see the power station unless very close. I ended up with a few shots of the cooling towers taken from the roadway outside the East Midlands Parkway railway station.

Generating hall with boiler building to right at the Ratcliffe power station.

Inside the boiler house at Ratcliffe power station.

The view from the top of the boiler building at Ratcliffe on Soar power station. A four image stitch in Photoshop.

Ratcliffe cooling towers from the top of the boiler building.

E.ON UK operate the 2034 MW power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar.

Ratcliffe Power Station From Bardon Hill, with a background of windmills.

Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station peeks over the horizon. Seen on a walk around Gotham's former gypsum mines.

The current road widening scheme has provided new views of the Ratcliffe power station from the spoil heaps, whilst they remain there.

The area around Gotham in Nottinghamshire was once the centre of a busy gypsum mining industry with a series of tramways and railways leading from the mines to roadside depots or down to wharves on the River Trent or sidings on the main line railways. Today the local mines have all closed, but the plaster works at East Leake continues to work with gypsum supplied from the desulphurisation process at Ratcliffe power station. The large gypsum boulders seen here in front of the power station have been unearthed during the widening of the A453(T) road nearby. The fact that they have been gathered together suggests that they may be due for processing into the plaster industry.

This power station even has its own Parkway station these days.

Ratcliffe-on-Soar on a sunny day. It is actually quite difficult to find an angle where you can see all eight cooling towers.

Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station against a typical summer 2008 sky.

I keep coming back to this place. Best viewed original size .

Coal stocks in front of the generating hall on a murky June day.

E.ON UK operate the 2034 MW power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar.