These turbines are now museum pieces, but newer ones are producing electricity within the oldest operating power station in Slovenia.

When the construction began back 1913 the role of the plant was foreseen as even bigger.

It should have produced power for the Styrian industrial basin around Graz in Austria.

However, the First World War cam inbetween and by the time it was finished, in 1918, the Austro-Hungarian empire had fallen apart and Fala became the driving force of industrialization in and around Maribor.

In 1936 it accounted for a fifth of the total power production in the whole state of Yugoslavia, and it continued to operate after the Second World War.

Now, the installation is fully automated and remotely controlled.

The only people there now are thousands of tourists who come there every year to admire its technical heritage,

in particular the engine room with a horizontal Francis turbine.