Power Stations & Electricity Generation in Glasgow

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Re: Power Stations & Electricity Generation in Glasgow

Postby BrigitDoon » Thu Apr 07, 2011 5:42 am

...and who's that letting off the fireworks in the background? Not the same guys who tried to blow up the gasholder in the other thread? :)
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Re: Power Stations & Electricity Generation in Glasgow

Postby cell » Thu Apr 07, 2011 6:46 am

Don't all power stations have a background hum and emit a general glow of charged particles or is that only in the cartoons? Perhaps Glasgow was a early nuclear leader!
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Re: Power Stations & Electricity Generation in Glasgow

Postby fatweegee » Fri Apr 15, 2011 10:54 pm

Govan incinerator was in operation until relativly recent times, made our bogeys from wheels ther in the 80's.
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Re: Power Stations & Electricity Generation in Glasgow

Postby cell » Tue Apr 19, 2011 6:13 pm

cell wrote:Here is a great old advert for the Glasgow Corporation Electricity Department. I guess it is from the thirties, the station is very stylised but could be Dalmarnock, a bit of artistic licence has been taken with the pylon, they’re not really that big!

Image


OK they’ve got the pylons in proportion but now they have a friendly giant wandering around! This Clyde Valley Electric Power Company advert is from the same 1931 publication as the GCED one above. The five stations that are referred to are the coal fired Yoker, Clyde’s Mill & Motherwell and the two hydro stations at Bonnington & Stonebyres.

Image
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Re: Power Stations & Electricity Generation in Glasgow

Postby BrigitDoon » Tue Apr 19, 2011 6:27 pm

cell wrote:OK they’ve got the pylons in proportion but now they have a friendly giant wandering around!

I suppose he's retired now or they could have got him to take away the high flats instead of nibbling them away.
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Re: Power Stations & Electricity Generation in Glasgow

Postby cell » Tue Apr 19, 2011 6:38 pm

BrigitDoon wrote:
cell wrote:OK they’ve got the pylons in proportion but now they have a friendly giant wandering around!

I suppose he's retired now or they could have got him to take away the high flats instead of nibbling them away.


Probably the result of Glasgow’s pioneering nuclear work! Now you know where the expression ”All right big man?” comes from.
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Re: Power Stations & Electricity Generation in Glasgow

Postby Doorstop » Wed Apr 20, 2011 6:55 am

He could put some bloody clothes on, he'll frighten the horses.
I like him ... He says "Okie Dokie!"
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Re: Power Stations & Electricity Generation in Glasgow

Postby cell » Thu Apr 21, 2011 6:31 pm

Another industrial electricity power station which I had always had down as a Hydraulic power station. This building which is located on Mavisbank Rd between the BBC and STV offices and is usually called Prince's Dock Hydraulic Power Station or "Tower of the Winds".

Image

However in the March 1903 Scottish Electrician (Yes I’m a sad so and so), there is a reference stating that the Graving docks could get a supply of electricity from Govan rather than enlarge the plant at East End of Prince's Dock, this points to an existing electricity station. Also on the NLS Bartholomew 1912 map, this building is labelled "Electric Sta" therefore it is reasonable to conclude that the building was both a hydraulic and an electrical power station and I’m claiming it as one of Glasgow’s electricity power stations.

The “Tower of the Winds” name comes from the four friezes around the top of the truncated chimney.

Image
Link to the site on RCHAMS http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/10 ... r+station/
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Re: Power Stations & Electricity Generation in Glasgow

Postby Josef » Thu Apr 21, 2011 7:11 pm

[uninformed bystander]

Right, so I'm confused now. Power generation at the time (as it still largely does now) would have consisted of burning stuff. So where's the chimney evidence?

I had a look back through the rest of the thread to find a station that didn't have one, and the only one I found was the Bothwell Street one, which carries with it more than the faintest bit of doubt about whether it's the same building as the one that housed the power generation. It looks like an admin/HQ building to me.

I wasn't quite clear on what was meant by 'Hydraulic Power' in the context of a distributed network, btw, so I went Googling (as one does). Best contemporary reference I could dig up was this.

[/uninformed bystander]
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Re: Power Stations & Electricity Generation in Glasgow

Postby cell » Sat Apr 23, 2011 9:42 am

I presume by the Bothwell St one, you mean the Waterloo St station? I would agree there is a bit of doubt about the exact location with this one, the RCAHMS pictures and location don’t tie up with what I’ve seen from other sources, you’ve prompted me that I still need to bottom this out, I do remember seeing it on an old map so I’ll double check. I would point out that this station was relatively small so I wouldn’t expect a huge chimney.

On the subject of hydraulic power, there was at least two other power stations in Glasgow which I know of, across the Clyde from the Prince’s Dock was the Queens Dock Pumping Station which is still there.

http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/17 ... r+station/

And on the High Street, which is now a gap site “First used in 1895, the Hydraulic Power Works consists of Lancashire boilers with economisers, pumping engines and accumulators. The water was delivered through 7 inch pipes, the engines having the ability to work independently of one another. In 1908-1909, this pumping station supplied 202,141 gallons of high-pressure water to the city of Glasgow through 30 miles of pipes.” Corporation of the City of Glasgow, 1909.

http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/17 ... g+station/
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Re: Power Stations & Electricity Generation in Glasgow

Postby cell » Sat Apr 23, 2011 10:19 am

http://maps.nls.uk/townplans/view/?sid= ... w_2_centre
Top right hand corner shows the station (with chimney), although “Main St” appears now to be Blythswood St. This building was extensively remodled at some time which would have removed any chimney evidence but I would agree, you can’t see it in the old picture of the station. It could be that this picture was taken after it was converted into offices and it underwent a further conversion. I'm sure I got that picture from an official historical account of the early days of electricity generation in Glasgow. It does mean that J Hume was mistaken when he took the picture which is now on the RACHMS website and that their location is also wrong.
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Re: Power Stations & Electricity Generation in Glasgow

Postby frankquinn24 » Mon Aug 22, 2011 6:24 pm

Hello.New boy here. I was employed by SSEB/ScottishPower for 28 years, starting off @ Clydesmill as a Switchboard Attendant, followed by posts in Barony, Bonnybridge and Hunterston. I then spent time with the Education and Training Department @ Cumbernauld as Training Engineer (Generation) which gave me access to most of the Boards premises.
From a previous post I see that Braehead was short on photos. I have a PR booklet dated 1958 giving details of the Station Scanned pictures are available, but I seem unable to load them into this reply.
Head office Address is given as Sauchiehall St. When it moved to Cathcart I don' t know, but it was there by 1962 when I Joined "the board".
WRT Clydesmill, it had two Control rooms, the "old" one was at the Eastern end of the Turbine Hall and incorporated the original LP station electrical control platform, The IP Electrical control room was overlooked by the original offices at that time empty and used as storeroom for archived log books etc. no direct view of the turbines except from access door.
The main offices were located in a block between IP and HP stations. The "new " Control room was located near the Gatehouse entrance by the Grid Switching Station, controlling both the HP machines and carrying out switching operations to Grid Control Instructions. Grid Control was (and still is) based at Kirkintilloch but in a changed location from the original position.
The "isolated" small building with Chimney housed a Gas Turbine generator controlled form Kirkintilloch. Gas turbines were powered by jet engines (in this case I think Rolls Royce Avons),quick to load up but expensive on fuel. An incident occured during the miners strike while the scheduled "Load shedding programme" was taking place. Cambuslang was cut off, but it was forgotten that the GT's auxilliary supply (for pumps etc.) came from the local network. Result the generator tripped off line with a further loss of supply to the Grid.
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Re: Power Stations & Electricity Generation in Glasgow

Postby Dexter St. Clair » Mon Aug 22, 2011 6:48 pm

Hi Frank, welcome aboard. Do you have a Flckr or Photobucket account for your photos as that's how most of us display photos on here. We upload to photobucket or flickr and use the web address for the photo from that site and paste it here as an IMG.

for clearer instructions Click on Here

If it's a more technical problem just post your difficulty here and a geek will appear.
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Re: Power Stations & Electricity Generation in Glasgow

Postby cell » Mon Aug 22, 2011 7:23 pm

Welcome Frank, as Dex says, follow the instructions and try photobucket or flickr for uploading photos, it’s not too difficult, even I got to grips with it!

Would love to see any pictures you have, let us know if you are still struggling to load them up, you can email them to me and I’ll put them up for you.

I’ve got some pictures of the gas turbine building being demolished which I’ll dig out. If you are interested there is spreadsheet of all past and present power stations in Scotland along with a KML file for plotting them on google earth. I need a few gaps filled which you might be able to help me out with
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Re: Power Stations & Electricity Generation in Glasgow

Postby Sharon » Mon Aug 22, 2011 8:52 pm

Yet more posting tips http://www.hiddenglasgow.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2418

And welcome to HG!
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