Tours of Ardnacrusha hydro station -1 July 19 - 13 Sept 19

0lddog

Booking required.

https://www.esb.ie/our-businesses/generation-energy-trading-new/ardnacrusha-tours

Mods please move if you can think of a better forum for this post, thanks.

strassenwo!f

Truly one of Ireland's greatest achievements.

Hibernicis

Thanks for posting. Booked for next week.

Hibernicis

Visited there this morning. Saw the station inside and outside, including the amazing original control room. Fascinating display of posters and artefacts. Guides excellent. Well worth the effort to get there and highly recommended for all ages. Five Stars, no question.

Hibernicis

Some photos. Size/Resolution reduced to meet posting restrictions.

This is the 1929 control room. No longer in day to day use, but kept "live" as a backup.

Hibernicis

The turbine hall and the penstocks.The 1929 control room is directly under the glass pyramid on the right.

Hibernicis

The penstocks. 90 year old German steel.

Hibernicis

The start of the distribution network

Hibernicis

The turbine hall, showing the 20th century control room tagged on to the side of the building. The top of the salmon "elevator" is in the foreground.

Hibernicis

Standing at the edge of the upper lock (70ft lift) and looking down into the lower lock.

Hibernicis

The turbine hall, showing three of the four turbines (the fourth is hidden). The 20th century control room is at the far end.

Hibernicis

Some of the posters and cigarette cards from the exhibition

Hibernicis

A couple of the many photos on display

Hibernicis

A couple of "artefacts" which some of the older boards members mat recall seeing in action

Hibernicis

One of the paintings (copy) by Sean Keating who was artist in residence during construction. The exhibition consists of 8-10 of his Ardnacrusha works.

gipi

Great photos, thanks for sharing. Have booked a tour for September, looking forward to the visit

Markcheese

I'd love to spend the day looking around, but I'm pretty sure my kids would love to kill me if I tried to drag them there...

plodder

Did the tour on Friday. It's pretty good and would recommend it. One thing that surprised me though was that the original very distinctly German roof of the building was recently renovated (at some cost) by replacing the original tiles with Welsh slate, which changes the character of it quite significantly imo. A bit disappointing considering it's a protected structure (though I'm not suggesting the work they did wasn't approved, I'm sure it was).