It turned out that the yard was full of wrecked, rusted and derelict trains, most (if not all) having been made in America in Philadelphia’s Baldwin Locomotive Works or the Vulcan Iron Works in Wilkes-Barre, PA.  After I spent a little while wandering around the yard the owner (or at least keeper) of the place turned up, a lovely old man who rents out the space not filled by trains for use as a car park.  The man (whose name I couldn’t quite understand) spoke no English but proceeded to show me around the yard pointing our the ages on the trains, most of them seemed to have been made around 1920 but one was as old as 1873.

Here are a handful of shots that I took in the yard…

As before, I have selected a top ten list based on the number of Flickr photos I found for each site in a single search, doubtlessly I will have missed important sites and got the ranking wrong but please feel free to point them out by leaving a comment. All of the photos used below were taken by other photographers and are used under a Creative Commons license (click through to Flickr for attribution), if you think you’ve got a better photo and it’s not CC – get your licensing sorted!

Annesley, Clipstone, Pleasley

This was one of my quick visits in between places so I stowed the car in the first possible place I could find by Googling “american adventure theme park postcode” and slinging the result (DE7 5SX) into my sat-nav, and went for a walk into the site. Despite the fact that it was a miserable day there were plenty of people walking dogs and riding bikes around the perimeter of the place which is a little disconcerting when you’re trying to work out how to subvert a fence! In the end I spotted a clear and easy hole in a metal gate and slipped through unnoticed, there were several spots though so access isn’t an issue.

I didn’t make it around the entire site but what I could see was fairly barren, there are some admin buildings left and there was clear evidence of fire in certain places…

… and some other commercial detritus…

Occasionally you’d spot some clear and definitive evidence that the site had been a theme park, such as bits of rides…

Points where rides had been anchored…

You could also see where the old railway line had been, carting people around on a little model steam train…

I know that there’s a lot more see but the rain and time constraints really stopped me from going much further, it didn’t help that I’d neglected to put on my wellies (see this post) so my feet were beginning to get a bit squelchy and I couldn’t venture into the muddier bits, next time I’m buzzing up the M1 I’ll try and make sure I’ve got some more spare time on my hands and go back for a more thorough explore.

Q1: Who are you?

Simon Cornwell and I run the urbex|uk (www.simoncornwell.com/urbex) website. I’m also one of the moderators on Derelict Places (www.derelictplaces.co.uk). I’m also known in the community as “Simon Cornwell”. It was a conscious decision from the start that I would use my real name for all my urban exploration; I feel it adds integrity to my writings and explorations.

Q2: Why do you do Urban Exploration?

I was always in-and-out of derelict houses, old bomb shelters, river culverts and tunnels as a child and never really grew out of it. When I discovered various urban exploration sites on the Internet in the late 1990s, I realised it was something I missed and started sneaking in and out of derelict buildings again.

I’m driven by mainly by curiosity. What’s in that old building? What was it built for? Who worked there? Why was it designed in this form? Why did it close? I turn these transitional sites into temporary museums where the price of admission is guile, agility and courage. Therefore I’ve experienced being in various locations which I would never have been able to: anything from old lunatic asylums through to top-secret military installations.

Q3: What's the best explore you've been on?

Cane Hill, 13th July 2002. There had been various pictures of some of the interiors of the buildings (mainly the laundry, corridors and water tower) on Andrew Tierney’s “the_one” website but this was the first time I’d been deep in the bowels of Cane Hill itself. The main hall had been burnt down a month before, but the Chapel was still fully fitted with its pews, pulpit, organ and other furniture.

There’s always something special about going in a building and not knowing what to expect. But that day in Cane Hill was superb. (It was later written up as “Grand Tour” on my website).  Cracking the water tower six years later was also memorable and it felt like finally finishing the site off.

Q4: What's worst explore you've been on?

St Lawrence’s, Bodmin in January 2007. We drove all the way to Cornwall (from Royston) only to get busted within five minutes of reaching the Fosters building. We were really unlucky: the alarm system was malfunctioning, the security guard was therefore on the prowl looking for people, and we turned up at the same time.

Another memorable experience (for all the wrong reasons) took place at an asylum with a film crew. It was decided that we wouldn’t go up the water tower, but everyone was so fired up by the day’s filming that they all shot up the water tower stairs like rats up a pipe. The director pointed out a missing slat on the way up but forgot about it whilst climbing down. He fell the last step, scraping his shin on the jagged edge of the rusted metal slat, before slamming down on the concrete floor. We thought he’d bust his leg, but he managed to hobble out with help.

Q5: If you could explore any site/facility in the world, what would it be?

Area 51 is top of the fantasy list followed by the wreck of the Titanic.

Q6: Are there any pieces of kit that you'd recommend to others?

Heavy boots, multiple torches, mobile phone, water and food.

Also get the best camera you can afford. I wish I had a better camera for my first forays into Cane Hill. I was halfway through formatting the “Grand Tour” when I realised that the quality of the photographs I’d taken were crap. It was the early days of digital photography, and the early tours on urbex|uk reflect that, but I wish I’d got a conventional camera or a digital camera with better resolution.

Q7: If you could give any tips to newbies or experienced explorers, what would they be?

Remember the motto: “Take only photographs, leave only footprints.” Keep to that rule and you’ll stay on the right side of the law. And that’s for newbies and experienced explorers.

Never delay exploring a site. Always seize the day and get out there. These places are in transition and they won’t stay derelict for ever; they could be demolished tomorrow.

Q8: What would win in a fight: 1,000 chickens or 1 giant chicken the size of a thousand chickens?

The 1,000 chickens would swarm all over the 1 giant one and gradually destroy it.

Whilst I was positioning my camera to take shots of this room I did have a feeling that there was someone nearby, I even saw a shadow (of what looked like a man) flick across one of the windows at the far end of the building which got my heart pumping a little bit! After staying still for a while I carried on taking photos but for at least fifteen minutes I had a definite sense that I wasn’t alone and sure enough when I clambered back out of the doorway I was confronted by a deer, yes – a deer! There seemed to be quite a lot of them in this area of the complex and whilst they were a bit jumpy they were very curious and in some cases approached me for a better look, only the babies ran away through fear – the adults just stood there stating at me. After the ‘Caution Wet Floor’ room I came across a boarded up prefab right next to what looked like an entrance to the site next to a large car parking area, I think this may be one of the boundaries between the derelict site and the live site, there was a van parked in the near distance as well but I couldn’t see any signs of activity so I carried on. The prefab’s lock was smashed off so I had a look around, the place was completely boarded up so it was pitch black inside but with my trusty head torch I could see that the place was in a derelict but not completely ruined state, I managed to get the chair shot below on a 30s exposure, at f/14 on ISO 1000 and that was with the aid of the head torch! Other than having a couple more face-offs with the local wildlife I didn’t stick around too much longer, I identified a few areas that warrant further exploration so no doubt I’ll be back at some point. I’m not sure exactly how to get into the main corridor network but judging by Flickr plenty have done so – if anyone who knows the place can offer some pointers please let me know.

When I arrived in the area there seemed to be some activity on the airfield so I had to give that a miss but so I headed down to the woods, parking next to (but not in front of!) a gate by a public footpath. The woods seem to be used heavily for paintballing and there’s plastic tape up all over the place, I managed to tread carefully and avoid being shot but on a couple of occasions I did end up within a hundred yards of a group of paintballers but I don’t think anyone spotted me.

The majority of the structures remaining seem to be odd roofless bunker/trench type arrangements, I saw at least 7 or 8 of them dotted throughout the woods (bearing in mind I was avoiding the ‘live fire’ of the paintballers), I’m not sure what their original use would have been…

I didn’t have much time on my hands so I was probably only wandering around for an hour or so, I’d love to come back with someone who knows the area a bit better – if anyone’s interested please give me a shout.

Here’s some other recent photos not marked as Creative Commons…

Q1: Who are you?

Gibbo (real name Andy). A Yorkshire born but North-West based fella who now co-administers WWW.NWEX.CO.UK

Q2: Why do you do Urban Exploration?

Like every young lad, I was fascinated by empty and abandoned buildings, probably for the thrill / ghost aspect I was lucky enough to see the old Victoria Station, and parts of the old Orgreave Coking Plant (scene of the bloody miners battle on June 18th, 1984). The complex was huge and had it’s own sidings and an engine shed full of coal wagons and a couple of diesel engines. I just wish cameras weren’t so expensive to operate back then.

Q3: What's the best explore you've been on?

Without a doubt, St Joseph’s Seminary near Wigan.

Q4: What's worst explore you've been on?

Burtonwood Services. An interesting building, pretty much intact inside, but we stupidly lingered after the explore and got arrested in an extremely heavy-handed two police force operation.

Q5: If you could explore any site/facility in the world, what would it be?

It would be nice to see if Area 51 is actually everything it’s hyped up to be. In the UK it would have to be the Fun Ship the Duke of Lancaster over at Flint, North Wales.

Q6: Are there any pieces of kit that you'd recommend to others?

The trusty Maglite with an LED conversion. You lose the warm incandescence when light painting, but it gives an amazing throw. I’m also a big fan of clockwork torches. They’re cheap and always worth carrying as an emergency spare.

Q7: If you could give any tips to newbies or experienced explorers, what would they be?

For noobs: Don’t hang around a site after an explore!

For experienced explorers: Never forget your beginnings. You were a noob once and probably left in the cold and shunned by those more experienced. So give the noobs a chance. Over at NWEX that’s our philosophy and have certainly reaped the rewards – trips underground to some fantastic mines that you would never otherwise see, they’re not even listed on the internet and you’d never find the access! We even have a member who gives us trips in his plane!

Urbex isn’t a way of life, it’s a hobby – albeit a very unusual one. It’s also a hobby that is forever changing.

Q8: What would win in a fight: 1,000 chickens or 1 giant chicken the size of a thousand chickens?

1 giant chicken. It would just stand on the 1000 chickens.

Once on to the site I had a mooch around the silos, there’s not a great deal to see but they’re pretty impressive and very large structures which are quite a sight to behold if you’ve not seen that sort of thing before. There were a few bits of graffiti around and some wooden boards laid out as though some skaters had been around, though nothing looked overly vandalised which surprised me for a site in such a built up area. One cool and unexpected part of the site as what seemed to be a petrol station, complete with a petrol pump, I guess this must have been used to fuel the delivery trucks but I’ve never worked in a place like this so I can only make assumptions.

I had a little poke around the rest of the compound and saw a rat scampering into a warehouse, unfortunately I just missed getting a decent shot of the flighty little bugger but I managed to get his tail and some fur in frame. I didn’t really make it into any of the warehouse areas but got a quick look into what I presume must have been the offices which was utterly wrecked with collapsing ceilings and smashed up walls – the reasonably intact boiler and a set of drawers were the only things that gave a clue to its original purpose.

There’s quite a bit of exploring to be done at the site, though I’m not sure these days since this mini site-report is almost a year out of date, I may attempt to return at some point in the next few months and see what it’s like. In the end I abandoned the explore part through lack of time and also due to a mild suspicion that I wasn’t alone, in all likelihood it was probably just the wind or cat but my head was telling me that it could’ve been a chav or a crack addict so I decided not to venture into the huge dark warehouse and exited the site the same way I came in.  It might seem overly cautious to some but I’ve always been a fan of following my instinct, tens of thousands of years of evolution have made it what it is and I’m not one to argue with that!

The reason most head-torches are unsuitable is that they sit smack bang in the middle of your forehead which might be perfect for a caver but if you’re an SLR user you’ll find that when you bring your camera to your eye you’ll end up banging the body (or attached flash) right into the torch.  The other problem is that you’ll need the torch for exploring and to aid focusing but unless you’re light painting you won’t want the torch light to come out in your shot and trying to switch off a head torch whilst wearing gloves can be a pain.

Given all of my whinging above you’ve no doubt realised that I was getting fed-up with the situation but luckily I came across the Cyba-Lite Explorer, it’s effectively a small pen-torch (like a mini-Maglite) that comes with a clip-mount and an elastic head-strap…

From a general standpoint this is handy because you could clip it to a tripod, a baseball cap or whatever you like but the most useful part to me is that the clip mount swivels.  This means that I can wear it as a head torch but mounted on the side of my head, meaning that it won’t get in the way of my camera and that rather than fiddling with any switches I can just point it away from the subject of my photo if don’t want to capture the light.  My only criticism so far is that it could be brighter, it does well enough but there’s no way I could use it as my sole torch in the really dark places but hey – I carry my 4-cell Maglite as much for defence as for light!

You might think that I’m gushing with compliments about something pretty simple but having this torch has made exploring and taking photos so much simpler and hassle free that I just can’t help it – especially seeing as you can pick them up for less than a tenner (I paid about £14 though).  If anyone’s interested in picking one up there seems to be an offer on at 7dayshop.com where it’s going for £8.99 delivered.