4 minute exposure of the airhouse at 5:30am
Briefly NGTE Pyestock was a Gas Turbine testing centre for all sorts of large engines. The air house housed 8 x 36,000 bhp engines which helped pump air around the site for testing the engines themselves. The site was mainly used for commercial testing however it was utilised by the military for the testing of jet fighter engines and Navy ship engines.
Returned this time with Sam the Mule, and Mr Dystopia. We also bumped into our good friends Darbian, Laura and the two Chris’s which all in all made for a good day out. After almost getting rumbled by secca when we got there the whole day was a game of cat and mouse complete with new haras fencing which made for nice obstacle in our efforts to cover more ground. We watched the sun rise from the Plant House roof before covering that building, Cells 1 &2 then we headed back over to the classic spots, the air house, and Cells 3 & 4 to bag a few more angles of these spots before they get demolished along with the rest of this place.
As well as increased secca presence there are now clear signs of demolition in progress with new large piles of scrap metal all over the place neatly piled for removal, as mentioned earlier there’s a lot of new fences and plant machinery on site and most disappointing of all a new large hole in the air house at the front near the gantry . It wont be long before this site bites the dust for good I hear between 3-6 months is the current estimate for completely clearance which is a much shorter time frame than the initially estimated 2 years I’d first heard. I’m hoping this wont be my last visit to Pye but I don’t think she has much longer left.
Highlights of the day have to be getting to the rooftops for the plant house before sunrise, the epic near misses with secca throughout the day and climbing the rusty ladder in cell 4 to the rusty platform to back a side shot of cell 4 from above. Now time for the photos (plenty more on my website link in sigi):
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Cant get enough of this place