Canteen

The canteen at the ATL Building on Nancarrow Avenue, Meadowbank, was part of a dedicated amenities building set apart from the main factory. The two structures shared the same site: the larger building held the factory floor, warehouse, and offices, while the second provided the workforce with dressing rooms, showers, and a place to eat. When the factory was operating, that workforce was building some of the most complex precision machinery produced in Australia. By 2015, the room held only peeling paint, dust-covered tables, and chairs nobody had sat in for years. Automatic Totalisators Limited incorporated on 21 April 1917, and the company's third and final factory was built at Nancarrow Avenue after the operation relocated from 182 Chalmers Street. The Meadowbank site opened c. 1947, with the road itself created as part of the factory development. The company manufactured mechanical and electromechanical totalisator systems for racecourse betting, alongside turnstiles, hospital communication equipment, vehicle registration plates, and commercial signs. By 1970, ATL equipment was in use at racing centres across 29 countries. The factory changed hands over the following decades. ATL's operations were acquired by the Smorgan group in 1980, then purchased by AWA (Amalgamated Wireless Australasia Ltd) c. 1988. The factory building was repurposed through the 1990s and 2000s as a multi-tenant facility. The canteen and its amenities building sat alongside that repurposed space, unchanged, as the broader site declined toward vacancy. The ATL Building carried local heritage listing under Ryde Local Environmental Plan No 105 (2003). Despite this, the Planning Assessment Commission approved the site's demolition in principle on 6 March 2013, as part of the Shepherds Bay Urban Renewal Concept Plan. The building was demolished c. 2016. These photographs from 2015 are among the last records of the interior as it stood.