Big coal fired power stations are slowly disappearing from our landscape. The nation – indeed the world – is slowly moving away from coal burning energy generation and all of the UK’s coal burning power stations will be closed by 2025.

Even before the current generation of power stations closures, the number of stations had been much reduced. At one point, most towns had their own power station, but with the advent of nationalisation, these were merged and a national grid was eventually created. The majority of the remaining coal burning stations were built in the 1960’s and 1970’s and tended to be on or near coalfields so that ‘merry go round trains’ of coal could be brought in and automatically unloaded then continue round on a loop of track to return to the mine for more.

Fiddler’s Ferry is the last remaining coal burning power station in the north west of England and is due to close in March 2020. It’s been a part of the landscape since it was built in 1971 and on a good day can be seen from dozens of miles away owing to it’s location on the flat plains around the Mersey.

Years ago I used to to work in Liverpool and drove past Fiddler’s Ferry on the M62, but like anything you see every day, began to stop noticing it. So with the end in sight, I thought I’d go and take a closer look. It will of course be a feature on the landscape for a few more years during decommissioning, but it won’t be generating power (or steam) for too much longer, so here’s one from an initial visit. And yes it’s in colour – I just thought they work better in that rather than black and white!