Conveyor Counterweights

The conveyor counterweights at Wangi Power Station are heavy cast-iron blocks suspended by chains at the end of the plant's coal conveyor. The counterweights are stacked, three or four blocks deep, hanging above a steel pulley wheel that returns the conveyor belt to its drive end. The cast iron is rusted to a uniform reddish-brown. The chains are heavy-link, similarly oxidised. The conveyor belt itself is gone, removed for salvage along with most of the working machinery, but the counterweights remain because their weight and bolting made them hard to extract. They are the most physically present object in the bay.

Coal conveyors run from the coal-receival yard to the boilers, lifting coal up to the bunkers above the burner level. The counterweights tension the conveyor belt, keeping it running at the right speed and preventing slack. Wangi's coal came in by rail and barge from local mines. The conveyors moved that coal from the receival point to the boiler bunkers continuously through every operating shift. After the plant closed in 1986, the conveyor system was decommissioned, the belts removed, the drives sold or scrapped. The counterweights stayed. They have hung from their chains undisturbed for nearly forty years.