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While researching places for my first trip to Belgium last year I spent many, many countless hours trawling through Google Maps on the off chance of finding something cool, so by the time we arrived on foreign shores I had a fair few places marked as 'unknowns' on my map (I have even more now!), ones to check out if we were passing nearby on the small chance they'd be something worth a look at if they weren't demolished.
This was one such place, I noticed it from the aerial mostly because it was absolutely chuffing massive! Easily one of the largest factories I had seen, and that excitement continued when we drove over the bridge next to it and caught sight of the frontage stretching far into the distance. We drove a loop round the perimeter and the place was wide open, it looked like brick reclamation had started on some of the exterior and interior walls but stopped at some point and it had just been left as it was. By this stage we still had no idea on the identity of the place or what they made so it became a goal to find that out from what was left inside. Luckily one of the offices still had a wealth of paperwork left inside it including blueprints and diagrams, and it turned out what we had found was an old locomotive factory!
This place will mostly be remembered though for the weather....our first trip was punctuated by lovely sun in between truly torrential, biblical rain/thunderstorms that sprung up out of nowhere. On this day we could see ominous deeply black clouds gathering, and I remember saying to my mate 'this one is gonna be big...', lo and behold a few minutes later the heavens opened! Now picture the scene, we were stood in the massive main factory hall which was supported by metal girders, about 20 of them in all, each with a drainpipe attached running the height from the roof to the drains under the floor, and almost every drainpipe had been broken off a few feet from the ground. As the heavens opened, the noise on the metal roof was absolutely incredible but this was surpassed by the sight of every drainpipe pouring water out into the drains and onto the factory floor in a proper deluge which continued for about ten minutes, the experience was absolutely amazing and one of my single favourite explore memories to date.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the Trabant! I also was suffering mega tripod fail, so some of the shots are pretty sucky...
Most of the frontage, stretching far into the distance to the edge of the shot
The incoming storm moments before it hit....you could feel the electricity in the air!
More here http://www.flickr.com/photos/mookie427/sets/72157629736926440/
This was one such place, I noticed it from the aerial mostly because it was absolutely chuffing massive! Easily one of the largest factories I had seen, and that excitement continued when we drove over the bridge next to it and caught sight of the frontage stretching far into the distance. We drove a loop round the perimeter and the place was wide open, it looked like brick reclamation had started on some of the exterior and interior walls but stopped at some point and it had just been left as it was. By this stage we still had no idea on the identity of the place or what they made so it became a goal to find that out from what was left inside. Luckily one of the offices still had a wealth of paperwork left inside it including blueprints and diagrams, and it turned out what we had found was an old locomotive factory!
This place will mostly be remembered though for the weather....our first trip was punctuated by lovely sun in between truly torrential, biblical rain/thunderstorms that sprung up out of nowhere. On this day we could see ominous deeply black clouds gathering, and I remember saying to my mate 'this one is gonna be big...', lo and behold a few minutes later the heavens opened! Now picture the scene, we were stood in the massive main factory hall which was supported by metal girders, about 20 of them in all, each with a drainpipe attached running the height from the roof to the drains under the floor, and almost every drainpipe had been broken off a few feet from the ground. As the heavens opened, the noise on the metal roof was absolutely incredible but this was surpassed by the sight of every drainpipe pouring water out into the drains and onto the factory floor in a proper deluge which continued for about ten minutes, the experience was absolutely amazing and one of my single favourite explore memories to date.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the Trabant! I also was suffering mega tripod fail, so some of the shots are pretty sucky...
Most of the frontage, stretching far into the distance to the edge of the shot
The incoming storm moments before it hit....you could feel the electricity in the air!
More here http://www.flickr.com/photos/mookie427/sets/72157629736926440/
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