Pump Hall Basement Catwalk

A metal catwalk crosses the basement of the pump hall at West Ryde Pumping Station, suspended above machinery that has settled into rust and dust. Light filters down into the space, picking out the surfaces of equipment that once drove water across Sydney's North Shore. Nothing has been cleared. What the frame shows is what was left. Station No. 2, the building that contains this space, was commissioned on 15 September 1921, constructed by William Adams and Co. Ltd., State Monier Works, and Refshaw and O'Brien for the Metropolitan Board of Water Supply and Sewerage. At completion it was the largest steam-powered water pumping station in Australia. The engine house sits at the heart of the complex, its basement and sub-basement originally housing turbine condenser pits below the main plant floor. The arched-headed steel windows above, the timber-louvred monitor roof at the ridge, and the reinforced concrete structure throughout are all original fabric from that 1916 to 1921 construction phase. The station came to its steam configuration after decades of engineering firsts. In 1906, Station No. 1 on the same site became the first pumping station in Australia to house steam turbine engines and the first to generate its own electric power for independent operation. By the late 1960s, West Ryde Pumping Station was the last remaining steam-powered station in the Sydney Water system. Full electrification conversion was completed in 1982, replacing the steam plant with 13 electric pumping units plus one standby, at a combined capacity of 700 ML/day. The engine house shell that enclosed the steam plant now contains mid-to-late 20th century electric machinery. The site was listed on the NSW State Heritage Register on 15 November 2002, and received an Engineering Heritage National Marker from Engineers Australia in October 2017. This photograph, made in 2015, records the pump hall basement before any conservation works reached that level of the building.