Revisiting Port Richmond

Sunday morning was initially a struggle. I had to get up well before dawn at 4:15am to drive to Falls Church and then to DC where 5 of us were meeting to drive up to Philadelphia, but once in the car I was wide awake. Which was just as well really. We were going back to Port Richmond, an abandoned power station which I'd last visited a couple of years before but had desperately wanted to see again. We all chatted on the drive up and the 3 hours traveling seemed no more than an hour. Here's an excellent bird's eye view.

We grabbed our gear and headed inside.

We wasted no time in setting up and swiftly agreed to meet up in 2 hours time, then went our separate ways, none of us talking as we looked about in awe. This place really has to be seen to fully appreciate its enormity and presence. Although it's been closed since 1985 it isn't difficult to look around and imagine the turbines humming and workers attending to them.

The wonderful control room. I didn't get too many good shots of this last time so patiently set my tripod up and took my time as who knows if we'll ever get back inside here again.

I took so many shots here and even though it had been trashed considerably more since I'd last been, I still felt the magic. My only regret was that I'd wanted to bring a box of donuts as a prop as this room with its big curving control desk reminded me so much of Homer at work in The Simpsons.

We eventually met up over 2 hours later but nobody was ready to leave so it was another hour before we even thought about finishing up. The lighting was wonderful in the turbine room with sunbursts shooting through the holes in the roof and lighting up the machinery. Lewis and I took some panoramic shots with our iPhones and then we did a group shot.

 Once group shots were taken it was time to leave. We left by a window and Huggy had the idea of photography us all leaving so I strung them together in a short video here.
We were amazed at how long we'd been inside and so of course were all starving and ready for food and beer after our hard work. We drove through some dodgy suburbs before settling on a small Indian food place. I have to call it that since it was really a take out place with a couple of tables. We pushed these together and the owner was nice enough to let us get some beer from across the road and drink it there. Which was just as well since we waited like forever for our food. Which wasn't particularly wonderful but it filled our bellies.

It actually wasn't too bad but we had beer and good company and that made it all so much better.We spent the rest of the afternoon scouting around the outside of the city, stopping at a few places but unable to gain entry. The one place we knew would be open was The Devine Lorraine, a large hotel I've visited previously, but today there were teenagers spraying paint outside and up on the roof so we left well alone. We were content to start driving back home and I got back to Meadow House well before midnight.
I found this wonderful article comparing Battersea Power Station in London with Port Richmond; it was only written last December so is completely valid.
 Adding this at the bottom, Huggy found a YouTube video of an urbexer who combined his own video with the Transformers 2 movie which was being filmed at Richmond the first time we visited..
Here's the link.