Server Room

The server room of the ATL Building at Nancarrow Avenue, Meadowbank sits empty in this 2015 photograph. Metal racks stand in rows, stripped of equipment, cables hanging loose between them. The room is quiet in a way that makes its former function hard to picture. Automatic Totalisators Limited built the Meadowbank factory in 1947, relocating from 182 Chalmers Street near Central Station. The purpose-built facility, designed by the engineering firm Julius, Poole & Gibson, housed the factory floor, warehouse, and offices under an Art Deco facade with the ATL diamond motif set into the foyer floor. A separate building on the same site provided dressing rooms, showers, and a canteen for the workforce. ATL had spent decades manufacturing precision mechanical totalisator systems for racecourses worldwide. By 1970, the company's equipment was in use at racing centres across 29 countries. But the mechanical systems that made the factory's reputation were already giving way to electronic and computer technology. ATL developed the world's first computer totalisator system in 1966, and the physical infrastructure that followed, switching rooms, server rooms, relay racks, became part of the building's later working life. The factory's manufacturing operations wound down through the 1970s and 80s. ATL's operations were acquired by the Smorgan group in 1980, then purchased by AWA (Amalgamated Wireless Australasia Ltd) c. 1988. Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, the building was repurposed as a multi-tenant facility, accommodating a gym, a church, office space, and a dance school. The ATL Building was listed as a local heritage item under Ryde LEP No 105 in 2003. Despite that listing, the Planning Assessment Commission approved the building's demolition in principle on 6 March 2013 as part of the Shepherds Bay Urban Renewal Project. The factory was demolished c. 2016. The site is now residential apartments.