Spares Shelving

A run of spares shelving at Wangi Power Station occupies one wall of the stores building, the steel shelving racked from floor to ceiling and divided into compartments for the different parts the plant carried. The shelves are stocked with a residue of what was left when the stores were wound down: lengths of pipe, gasket sets, valve fittings, bearings still in their original packaging, hand-written labels on each shelf identifying the part category and the original supplier. The shelving itself is heavy steel angle, painted in the standard pale industrial green, rusted along the joins where the paint has failed. Light falls on the shelving from a high window along the back wall.

Wangi's spares inventory was sized for the continuous operation of a 330 megawatt plant: bearings, gaskets, valves, control components, electrical fittings, lubricants, hand tools. Each part category had its own labelled location on the shelving, and the storekeeper issued items against a job number for the fitter or electrician collecting them. When A Station retired on 7 March 1985 and B Station closed on 31 October 1986, the spares operation wound down with the rest of the plant. The higher-value items were transferred or sold; what is on the shelving in this photograph is the residue that was not worth moving.