Old Store Shelving

Old shelving in the parts store at Kandos Cement Works runs floor to ceiling along the back wall of the room, built in timber and braced at each upright with a diagonal cross-piece. Each shelf is divided into compartments by partition boards, with hand-written labels pinned to the front edge. The labels describe the contents in fitter's shorthand: bearing sizes, gasket diameters, valve types. Some are typewritten on small card stock. The shelves are stacked with boxed and unboxed parts in no particular order. Dust has settled on every horizontal surface and softened the outlines of the older boxes. A wooden ladder, mounted on a top rail and running on rollers, gives access to the upper shelves. Daylight comes in through a high window above the shelving and casts a low rectangle of light across the floor.

The store at Kandos held the working inventory the maintenance crews drew on across the plant's 95-year operational life. The shelving in this photograph dates from an earlier generation of the store's fit-out. Boxes were issued against signed paperwork, recorded in a logbook at the counter, and the empty shelves were restocked from suppliers' deliveries through the dispatch yard. The plant closed in September 2011. The 98 redundancies were spread across four months, and the store was wound down through the same period. Most of the shelving is still loaded with the parts that were on it when the last fitter walked out.