A smaller kind of bridge
Weisweiler, North Rhine, Westphalia, Germany
<font face="arial">7:19am CEST, 19. September 2004</font>
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© 2004 Peter Braatz, All Rights Reserved.
Caption
Weisweiler: A power station site with tradition
I wanted to look for some "other" - but real - kind of Bridge. The choosen "bridge" is a link between the main-elevator and one of the two main-blocks of a lignite power station. Its height is 107m above ground and when walking over it you can just take a look down between your feet: the floor is made of an iron grid...
Shooting the panorama standing ON the bridge would not have looked very nice because of the two very close and big buildings at each end of the bridge. So i decided to place my tripod on the roof nearby and wait for the sun to come up...
The RWE Power Station is situated in Weisweiler (between Cologne and Aachen, Germany, near the Belgium Border) and was first connected to the public electricity grid on January 10, 1955! The first unit produced 100 MW, today it produces about 2250 MW.
It is driven by the opencast mining area "Inden" just nearby - actually you can see one of the very large diggers (up to 13.000 t, 96 m height) between the two cooling towers. From there the lignite is transferred into a "boiler" (just about 130m high), burns there at 1100 Degrees Celsius. The Watersteam passes a turbine and produces electricity. The "smoke" you see coming out of the cooling towers is just Water, resulting from the cooling process. (Naturally this is a VERY short description of the process!)
[A very big "Thank you" to Mr. Kilsch from RWE for standing up on a sunday morning at 5 o´clock]
On www.360pixel.de you will find some more panoramas from the most western city of Germany: Aachen.
Equipment
Taken with Nikon D70 digital SLR, 17-35mm 2.8 lens at 17mm (equivalent to 25,5mm), f.8 at approx. 1/4 second. Mounted on a Manfrotto SPH 303. Stitched with Realviz Stitcher 4.02 (12+6+6+2)
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