Kelenfold Power St Hungary, visited with Camerashy on our Eastern Bloc Tour ( reports to follow ) If carlsberg made power stations, the quote Camerashy said when entering the control room just about sums this place up. I think it's safe to say that when this pop's up on the net we all want a bit of the action, knowing it was to far to try and explore in the good old fashion way i set about trying to get permission and after a lot of research i finally got the person i needed to e-mail. you may be forgiven in thinking that would be the easy part, well in some ways it was but it took nearly 6 months of sending e mails and waiting for a response which never came then trying and trying and trying again, it was at this point i nearly gave in and called it a day. it was at work i thought right one last go, sent the mail two minutes later PING...an arranged visit will be available in August please confirm that you wish to visit...YES..not so simple after that when i tried to arrange a day it went quiet again, not to be deterred we booked the flights and fingers crossed we would get in. yet more e-mails with no confirmation. i told them we booked the flights and need to know if the dates were going to be fine, after a couple of days we were told that someone will meet us and let us in...Finally.
On the day of the visit we drove up to the power station and waiting was an old man on a bike, thank god as i had doubt's all the time. he unlocked the gates then the door to the spiral stairway we followed him up to the top and through another set of doors and into a corridor you could sense the excitement as we approached the double doors. we could see the green tinge of the control room, he swung open the door and we were in...Oh my god. He turned to us and said how long, without thinking i said three hours...ok i come back and off he went leaving us to the whole site to ourselves. Without a doubt one of if not the best place i have shot, maybe not the best explore but an incredibly beautiful building and well worth thre effort,miles and all the other crap we had to put up with on this trip.
On the day of the visit we drove up to the power station and waiting was an old man on a bike, thank god as i had doubt's all the time. he unlocked the gates then the door to the spiral stairway we followed him up to the top and through another set of doors and into a corridor you could sense the excitement as we approached the double doors. we could see the green tinge of the control room, he swung open the door and we were in...Oh my god. He turned to us and said how long, without thinking i said three hours...ok i come back and off he went leaving us to the whole site to ourselves. Without a doubt one of if not the best place i have shot, maybe not the best explore but an incredibly beautiful building and well worth thre effort,miles and all the other crap we had to put up with on this trip.
Some History
When Kelenfold Power Plant started generating electricity in 1914, it was one of the most advanced plants of its day-though it was modernized and expanded several times since then to serve the changing energy demands of the surrounding districts.The buildings, designed and built by Kalman Reichl and Virgil Borbiro (Bierbauer) between 1927 and 1929, are protected by law, which means they'll never be demolished. Sadly, in this case this means that they aren't being touched at all, even for basic maintenance, so their condition has clearly worsened during the past few years. Only production companies benefit from this kind of perpetual decay: Several apocalyptic movie scenes and music videos have been filmed at Kelenfold.
