Thorpe Marsh Final Two Cooling Towers Demoliton 19th August 2012

The final two cooling towers at Thorpe Marsh Power Station near Barnby Dun, Doncaster, UK are demolished. They were pulled down by a wire rather than using exploives as it was feared explosives could damage the nearby River Don and canal.
Check this picture - taken by @SYP_AirOps (South Yorkshire Police Helicopter) on Sunday afternoon - @SYP_AirOps
/ large

[@CaptainMudlark]

They were a hell of a landmark. When we'd been away we could see them as we approached home from perhaps forty or fifty miles off.

[@greggroover4437]

Dang that is tall hey where is our house remember you can see the cooling towers oh yeah that’s right

[@user-tf6mp8to1p]

​@@greggroover4437 р ни

[@miss.g-shun-w]

That thing was freaking huge! The fact that they didn't need to use explosives is impressive.

[@Debbie091974]

It was well worth getting up so early. It was a beautiful morning for such an iconic occasion. I was there with my uncle (in law) who was there when they went up, worked there for years and was there to see them come down. Such a shame.

[@srobbo1978]

I lived in Barnby Dun from birth and i could see these towers from my house as a young boy. At night i could see the red lights on the taller thin towers that were there when it was operational. Ahh memories, sad to see it all be completely gone now. I was always amazed by it.

[@western_alex]

I did too, shame

[@hamzahassan7730]

9 years late but did you get to see the chimneys and power plant come down? There seems to be no videos or pictures of them being demolished. Just these cooling towers

[@lindleypoolman1]

Thank you for taking the time to video this. It was cool seeing the 2 towers final destruction.

[@00000foster]

Didn't even realise they were demolished until the other day when I realised they were missing hahaha shock of my life

[@dragoncalf]

Great video, so sad to see them go. Anyone notice how when the first tower was collapsing it appeared to fray out in at the top? This is because when the station operating it was noticed that large cracks had appeared at the top of three towers. This was fixed by securing metal cabling, if you look closely at the start of the vid you can see the metal cabling wrapped around the top of the tower.

[@MrJimbaloid]

That guy has a massive set of balls.

[@stevehoward3049]

Great footage. What an amazing way to take down such a huge tower.

[@western_alex]

Use to love it when there was the towers there, sad they have gone. Just recent i went down the old abandoned tracks to the power station and got some old brake pipes for wagons and took then and there is still wires on the rails! Sadly, some robbers have nicked my brake pipes.

[@hoppinonabronzeleg9477]

My mate from Ontario Canada comes across occasionally, whenever he sees cooling towers from the road/motorway etc, he always asks 'Hey is that nuclear?' In Ontario/Michigan/New York state it is nearly all hydro, and they associate the towers with nuclear. But these are just venturis for cooling the steam to reuse it; as cooling water. Some will be used for heating the plant. Using hydro, there is a never ending great lake system going over a cliff. Here in the UK despite being an island, fresh water is in relatively short supply, and we don't really have the infrastructure to store rainwater!

[@Brendan45600]

:( sad. that power station has been around since i started living here 6 yrs! AGO

[@theant9821]

That last one wasn't goin down without a fight. Sad to see them go. From up the road from me you used to look one way and see west Burton, cottam and high marnham. The other way and see ferrybridge, drax, eggborough and Thorpe marsh. Very impressive indeed. We want more of them.

[@andrewbriggs6083]

You people are changing my history. These were the landmarks that i remember. One by one. Seriously this I guess is the so called progress that is change. One day all of us wont be here anymore, and nobody will remember.

[@danefilander6306]

That was absolutely fantastic bit of demolition work.

[@Tigsty]

I spent years taking care of these towers

[@greggroover4437]

Wow you must of been huge to be able to reach the top of the tower to clean it with a giant rag

[@nlo114]

@@greggroover4437 You daft 'aporth! They use a long pole wi' a sponge like those window cleanin' fellas 'ave.

[@whocares8735]

Gotta make it about you

[@kh3612]

@@greggroover4437 😂😂😂😂😂

[@kh3612]

@@nlo114 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@wesmiller370]

Wow that is awesome

[@dave4842]

great video, thanks

[@karagregory69]

Everytime I see a demo filming, I see if a city bus will stop directly in the shot the moment it starts to go down.

[@theenderclops]

what edit: i think i’m the first one to be recommended this yet??

[@18quasimodo]

awesome video ,the digger driver must be one cool dude ,there till the last minute

[@PhilJonesIII]

Nearly HIS own last minutes.

[@pamt7740]

Wondered why I couldn't see them when I came back to the area!!!

[@masterdanthrax]

Iconic buildings gone

[@5particus1]

my 4 yr old son on my shoulders highest person when you look at the people :) history being made ?? i know i wont forget, dont think jake will either. thanks

[@abcdefg97954]

begs to wonder why they didnt build two more boilers and extend the turbine hall to take two extra turbines and build six more cooling towers it would have been cheaper than building a new station

[@liamobrien3938]

R.I.P landscape

[@Tigsty]

spent most of my time stopping people nicking copper

[@greggroover4437]

Just curious what does that mean

[@greggroover4437]

Just like when you walk on something that is made of wood or plastic or really thin metal it shakes the bugs below or for instance if you were to fall

[@romeogrigoras9378]

Hi. In România, the power plants that we had, use to heat city's block bulding, and some factories. In England theyr main purposes was to heat cities, or just to produce/generate electricity?

[@elainewalker6375]

very sad to see the last 2 towers go down, No more will we have a landmark to guide us home. Thanks for sharing the video with us .

[@jasinere35]

this may be the end for thorpe marsh but there is good news that follows this as acorn power are going to build on the site & its another powerstation but gas this time & as for the demolition process, thorpe marsh was the guineapig in that aspect as this was the first time that the cheesewire method of demilition was used on such a structure bearing in mind that explosives could not be used due to the canal & village being so close by

[@western_alex]

Still not happened

[@combie7482]

Tower #1: oh look some people- AHHHHHHHHHHHHH (falls) Tower #2: lol look at that thingy trying to collapse me. lololol- wait what’s happening- AHHHHHHHHHHH (also falls)

[@Tigsty]

I was the security guard there for a while, glad to see it come down

[@greggroover4437]

How come

[@northernofficials4461]

Going eco

[@whocares8735]

Breathing all that radioactive dust mustve been sick 🤙🏻

[@WootTootZoot]

Hey Dufus ! It was a coal fueled power station and the only thing that tower had going through it was steam.

[@northsimulation3386]

What a stupid comment, cooking towers at any power station, even nuclear have absolutely no radioactivity in them. They are used for what their name implies “ cooling ordinary water”

[@whocares8735]

@@northsimulation3386 yeah i actually dont believe in it anymore either. Ive heard of gaylen windsor and all that...

[@bernieshort6311]

It would have been better if I could actually understand how they collapsed the towers. Pulled down with a wire is erm - vague. It sounded to me as though the wire was cutting, guess I'll never know.

[@alun7006]

Tightened it around the base until it crushed the circumference. Once it gives the whole thing collapses under its own weight. The contractor who did the demolition has their own video about it.

[@brianwillson9567]

The premature closure of coal powered power stations before adequate replacement by nuclear will ultimately be seen as grand folly.

[@abcdefg97954]

Just wonder if this will every get built as we are running out of gas in England its a great risk building a gas fired power station that will have to buy in resources from abroad the gas station at keadby was built after the demolition of the coal fired power station on the same site and is not 20 years old and it is being mothballed

[@juancarloshipolito8380]

bruh what happend to the excavator at the cooling towers after they get demolished

[@typeratte]

the dog knew before of the collapse!

[@greggroover4437]

I was saying the exact same thing

[@stevehoeard365]

Better ears

[@anthonymcdonnell6615]

wonder if they will do this with Fiddlers ferry power station,that is near a canal and a river

[@luke-xg4fu]

Anthony Mcdonnell in Worrington uk

[@josephinemitchell1307]

In live West Yorkshire with canal and a river and the 2 cooling towers came down around 96.

[@madelinehartley9192]

I only droveast them on Friday :( wish I could of seen them go down

[@greggroover4437]

Do you know what state it was in

[@henaislahubble3928]

At 2:48 look, it's a giant turkey!

[@martintolenaars4416]

henaisla hubble 😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@RMSLusitania]

Cooling tower 1: 2:03 slow motion: 2:35 Cooling tower 2: 4:32

[@Tigsty]

I miss the tower's 😚😀

[@western_alex]

Same

[@dragoncalf]

civ.eng.cam.ac.uk/isegroup/thorpe.htm shows more details and pics of the cracked tower and repair process

[@RMSLusitania]

Civ.eng.cam.ac.uk/isegroup/thorpe.html

[@VideoNarstee]

Another reminder of the past wiped out

[@johnhibbs]

OMG!!!!

[@theant9821]

The tall thin ones are chimneys

[@greggroover4437]

So I guess that I am a chimney

[@greggroover4437]

If those are chimneys than what are the round ones called

[@RMSLusitania]

The round are cooling towers you kiddo

[@jasinere35]

Thorpe marsh consisted of 2 turbine halls 2 boiler houses 3 cooling towers per boiler 2 separate chimney flues 2 ash hoppers & a diesel generator with single chimney all ran from one control room

[@sis651]

Is the digger manned, or sth. remote controlled? It's very dangerous to be there...

[@western_alex]

Yes it was manned

[@greggroover4437]

Yeah I was thinking thinking if that falls on him he is dead

[@Tigsty]

miss it, what happened to to haunted building, were people got electrocuted?

[@greggroover4437]

Wait people would go there to get electrocuted I would hate to have to pay for the chair

[@modelcitizen2028]

Yeah, heard about that on another vid. Workers cleaning out the electrostatic precipitators.

[@donaldreeb6024]

How did they actually pull it down with wires?

[@modelcitizen2028]

Long wire rope attached to a critical number of support posts. Excavator slowly draws the wire, a bit like cutting cheese.

[@robotrhinoproductions8191]

Dats 1 big cooling towa

[@jasinere35]

big isn't in it takes 45 seconds to walk the diameter of one & here there was 6 of them until they tore them down one at a time but last 2 came down half an hour between the 2

[@ultrasimplexdeuswhitescscope]

What's being built on the site

[@western_alex]

Nothing

[@greggroover4437]

Probably a wind turbine but I don’t know

[@RMSLusitania]

Still proposal. Its proposed to be built with a gas power station.

[@25252ben]

the site was closed in 1994 and abandoned up until the demolition of the towers to set way for a new cleaner power station to be built there anytime soon to what ive been told by a close friend whos now working there cleaning the rubble up..

[@greggroover4437]

Cool I might try to fine something that looks exactly like that that is maybe as tall as me or around 8ft or 10ft for my o scale train set were the cracks already there or was that from the cord in the walls

[@zsla4948]

Cooling towers use steam so it's already safe for the environment

[@jasinere35]

work has stopped all that's happened is the scrap got sold & all the concrete is just piled up aswell as able left behind the kabins that were used while demolition was going on

[@jasinere35]

cracks were already there as Thorpe marsh was an experimental station that used all different stuff & it had stood the test of time in all weathers long after the main station got demolished & at least 5 of the towers were strapped up by tension wires along the rim to stop them falling down

[@PantherAusfD1944]

Welcome to Chernobyl

[@marcuslawson6716]

I am ShOkEd

[@WootTootZoot]

'at's goood in't it

[@gorkhalichannel501]

Dead zone

[@BournvilleCollege-kq2bt]

as Vince from Desmond's once said...you see how God is good!😂😂😂😂 armen my brother armen to you fam awh awoh.😂 God is good fam God is good.😉

[@harryandruschak2843]

Translation into English, please?

[@aribahombre2942]

Don't encourage these fucking religious nutters . They're everywhere . The topic here is - the demolition of the last 2 cooling towers at Barnby Dun . NOT RELIGION .

[@RMSLusitania]

@@aribahombre2942 do you have religion or not?