Turbine Hall Walkway

Looking the length of the turbine hall at Wangi Power Station from one of the side walkways, the hall runs away from the camera in a long industrial perspective: 228 metres end to end, 11 storeys to the roof above, the steel columns rising on both sides in matched rows. The floor of the hall is concrete, empty of the generating plant that once occupied it. The walkway runs at an upper level, set against the long side wall and looking down across the bays. Daylight comes through the high windows along both sides of the hall and through clerestory openings in the roof. The far end of the hall reads as a point in the perspective, the steel framing converging on it.

The turbine hall housed the six Parsons turbo-alternators that produced Wangi's electricity from 1958 to 1986. Each machine sat on its own concrete pedestal in line down the hall: the three 50 megawatt A Station units toward one end, the three 60 megawatt B Station units toward the other. The walkway in this photograph carried operators between levels and gave maintenance access to the upper portions of the running plant. After equipment removal between 1995 and 1997, the hall has held its dimensions: a 228-metre-long room with the structure of a working coal-fired power station and none of the working plant.