Plumbers Workshop

The plumbers workshop at Wangi Power Station occupies a steel-framed bay alongside the main building, fitted out for the pipe fabrication and repair work that ran continuously through the plant's working life. A long workbench runs along one wall, fitted with vices, pipe-threading dies, and a hydraulic bender at one end. Pipe-storage racks on the opposite wall hold lengths of steel pipe in various diameters, the larger sections still in their factory wrapping. A welding bay at the back of the workshop is set up for pipework fabrication: a steel-topped table with clamp positions, a TIG welder on its stand, gas bottles secured against the wall. The floor is concrete, scuffed at the bench positions from decades of foot traffic.

Power stations of Wangi's scale ran their own plumbing maintenance crews on shift through every working day, fabricating and repairing pipework across the plant: feedwater lines, condensate returns, fire mains, drain headers, instrument tubing. The workshop in this photograph held the tools for that work. After the plant closed in 1986, the workshop was wound down with the rest of the maintenance operation. The benches and the heavier equipment remained largely in place; the smaller tools and the high-value items were removed. The pipe racks still hold a residue of stock from the last working months.