Control Room

A pale yellow instrumentation panel covers the wall of the control room at West Ryde Pumping Station, its surface crowded with rows of circular analogue gauges. They are labelled for points on the northern distribution network, among them Pymble and Killara. 3 chart recorders sit at the lower left, one carrying a handwritten note, and 2 yellow sticky notes marked Eastern and Western are fixed to gauges in the upper right. The station now operates under remote control, leaving the panel redundant. West Ryde Pumping Station, formally known as Ryde Pumping Station and site, was built in two distinct phases. Station No. 1 was completed in 1891 by the Harbours and Rivers Department and handed to the newly formed Metropolitan Board of Water Supply and Sewerage. It was the mechanism by which Sydney's developing northern suburbs first received a reliable water supply, fed by a 24-inch main from Potts Hill and lifting water to reservoirs at Ryde and Chatswood. Station No. 2 followed between 1916 and 1921, built to meet a demand that had outgrown the original plant. It was commissioned on 15 September 1921 as the largest steam-powered water pumping station in Australia. The station accumulated engineering firsts across three decades: steam turbine engines in 1906, the first in any Australian pumping station; reinforced concrete chimneys constructed in 1918 for an early industrial application of the material; electrically welded steam piping installed in 1921; and a pneumatic ash collection system in 1923. Progressive electrification through the 1970s and into 1982 replaced the steam plant entirely, bringing 13 electric pumping units into service and making the station the largest domestic water pumping station in Australia at that time. The control room panel in this photograph, captured in 2015, records the distribution system those decades of engineering built. The gauges name points on the network, among them Pymble and Killara, that the station has supplied without interruption since Station No. 2 was first commissioned. Listed on the NSW State Heritage Register in 2002 and awarded an Engineering Heritage National Marker in October 2017, West Ryde Pumping Station remains an active facility.