Clocks

Two gauges, white enamel faces and Roman numeral graduations, sit mounted on cast iron fittings inside West Ryde Pumping Station. They were made by G. Kent Ltd, a firm with manufacturing operations in London and Luton. The rear gauge carries a red indicator hand; both are the kind of instrument built to be read quickly and read correctly under working conditions. West Ryde Pumping Station was commissioned on 15 September 1921, built to relieve Station No. 1, which had been running since 1891 and had exhausted its capacity by 1916. At completion, Station No. 2 was the largest steam-powered water pumping station in Australia. It served reservoirs at Chatswood, Pymble, Wahroonga, Hermitage, Mobbs Hill, and Beecroft, and was part of the infrastructure that made the North Shore's suburban expansion possible. The station ran on steam from that 1921 commissioning for six decades. Pulverised coal fuelled the boilers from the early 1920s onwards. A pneumatic ash collection system, described at the time as state of the art, was installed in 1923. By the late 1960s, West Ryde Pumping Station was the last remaining steam-powered station in the Sydney Water system. Progressive electrification through the 1970s concluded in 1982, by which point 13 electric pumping units plus one standby were installed, and the station had become the largest domestic water pumping station in Australia. The cast iron fittings these gauges are mounted on belong to that steam era. The plant they monitored has been replaced; the instruments remain. This photograph, made in 2015, records them as they sit in the station now: dials still legible, the red hand on the rear gauge still pointing somewhere specific, the numbers still waiting to mean something.