please empty your brain below

You'd also have passed right by The Riverside Centre which is situated on the bank of the Jubilee, a rowing and canoeing facility which opened earlier in the summer and is the first of its kind in the region. British Rowing, Sport England, the charity SWIPE, Eton College and Slough Borough Council have helped set up the facility so that people from the local area can participate in water sports for many years to come.

https://www.facebook.com/theriversidecentreslough
The new bridge over the GWR may be more lorry-friendly, but it is surely not coincidence that it is only now, when the railway is being electrified, that it is being done.

You mention Citroen, who had a factory on the trading estate from 1926 to 1966, and built the classic DS there - launched 60 years ago next month, and still futuristic enough to have featured in the 2015 scenes in "Back to the Future"

I notice that the Jubilee River has effectively given Eton a moat - now why would they need one of those?
@ timbo

To protect them from Harrow?
You might be interested to know that the power station is in the middle of the trading estate because it's a combined heat and power plant - providing hot water for heating to the businesses on the estate. http://sse.com/whatwedo/ourprojectsandassets/renewables/sloughheatandpower/

There aren't all that many of these in the UK, because it needs the sort of far-sighted planned development and infrastructure investment we tend not to be good at...
@Bronchitikat
....or maybe it's to stop any more escaping and running the country?

@MikePJ
Problem with CWP schemes is that the buildings they heat last far longer than the power station itself - a new district heating boiler plant had to be built for Dolphin Square when Battersea Power station closed.
The same thing is now happening at Slough.

Since the 1960s, economies of scale have resulted in power stations such as Drax, Eggborough, Didcot (these are often 2000MW and more, compared with Slough's 47MW) and the rest: much bigger and, thanks to the National Grid, able to be located well away from large residential areas - access to good sources of fuel and water being the priority.
@timbo: yeah, I agree that bigger power stations are much more efficient at producing electricity. But given that most of the energy consumed by a home or office is in the form of central heating and hot water, I'd be inclined to think of the Slough system as a district heating system that also produces some electricity, rather than the other way around. A number of 1960s university campuses work the same way: I studied at York, where a couple of large Caterpillar engines burn natural gas and make a few MW of electricity, but their main reason is to produce lots of heat for the campus.
... or to justify the Eton Moating Song
MikePJ
Olympic Park has two, powered by gas turbines, and they have obviously thought about it as there are 2 turbines, (in one of the plant that I toured a couple of years ago), and space for 3 more run by Cofley. In addition to providing heat and A/C to all buildings in Olympic Park to within 0.1 degree C as requested they also supply Westfield, and are moving on to supply buildings in the Stratford area, hence why Angel Lane bridge was closed last year to provide piping. The next connection is to Ikea flat pack housing estate at Sugar House Lane just south of east side of Bow flyover, where a new junction will be built, plus the disruption of installing these superheated water pipes under High Street. DG will surely have days worth of blogs when that disruption starts !!
Hey,DG! There was an article about the making of the new 3 episode series of Thunderbirds on the BBC news programme this morning. Did you catch it. Showed the outside and inside of the building in your photographs! Coincidence?
I didn't see the BBC Thunderbirds report, but yay, it's now online here :)

And it looks like the building being reused is this one.










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