Crossness Pumping Station

Brian G

Brian G

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On Sunday 12th, I went to the last open day of the year at Crossness Pumping Station in east London.
This place was built in the 1860's as part of London's new Victorian sewerage system, and houses four of the largest surviving Beam Engines, certainly in Britain and possibly in the world.
It is a grade one listed building operated by the Crossness Engines Trust who are seeking to preserve and restore it to it's original Victorian splendour.

This was my first visit and I didn't know what to expect.
I didn't take a tripod and I don't tend to use flash, so all interior shots were taken hand-held at 3200 ISO

As well as the steam engines, the trust are restoring the building, and one of the highlights is the central Octagon, repainted in the original colour scheme.

Crossness Pumping Station by briangibson427, on Flickr

Incredible detail on the Victorian cast iron work
Crossness Pumping Station by briangibson427, on Flickr

View through the arch
Crossness Pumping Station by briangibson427, on Flickr
 
They don't make 'em like that any more. You just don't get sh*t farms looking that pretty these days.
 
Marvellous set of photos here and very inpressive for handheld at 3200! I used to deal with the water industry many years ago and it was great when you came across an olde worlde gem like this.
 
The actual Crossness steam engines are very difficult to photograph, since they are so massive and they are arranged over three floors.
The "business end" of "Prince Consort," the restored beam engine, these are the main steam cylinders on the ground floor level:

Crossness Pumping Station by briangibson427, on Flickr
Incidentally, on a technical note, the above shot was taken with the Canon 8-15 F4 Fisheye lens at 15mm, which normally curves anything off axis.
There is no correction profile for this lens in Lightroom, but I've found that applying the profile for the Canon fixed 15mm F2.8 lens will successfully "de-fisheye" the output giving the result above.

Upstairs is the beam:

Crossness Pumping Station by briangibson427, on Flickr

This is engineering on a truly massive scale.
The components for the engines were made in Birmingham and floated down to London on canals and the river Thames and then assembled at the Crossness site.
Just imagine the work of lifting that beam into place using manual labour.

Crossness Pumping Station by briangibson427, on Flickr

Here's one that's in it's unrestored condition:

Crossness Pumping Station by briangibson427, on Flickr
 
great shots Brian , I used to be a volunteer at this site and helped restore a very small part of one of the engines it was very messy work but I loved it I no longer help as I had to move far away from the area so its great to see some pictures of the place.
thanks for posting them up :)
 
Thanks for posting these, we have two much smaller pumping stations near us which are open to public. But that's on a much more grandiose scale.
 
Dmax said:
great shots Brian , I used to be a volunteer at this site and helped restore a very small part of one of the engines it was very messy work but I loved it I no longer help as I had to move far away from the area so its great to see some pictures of the place.
thanks for posting them up :)
Click to expand...
Thank you.
I like all forms of mechanical engineering, but those engines are on a different scale to most other things!
I can't imagine the sort of effort that it must take to work on one - even the spanners are gigantic.
squintykid said:
Thanks for posting these, we have two much smaller pumping stations near us which are open to public. But that's on a much more grandiose scale.
Click to expand...
Thank you.
 
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