Controllers

A row of controllers at White Bay Power Station sits along the front of one of the control panels, each unit a rotary-handle switch mounted in a brass-bezelled escutcheon. The handles are bakelite, the brass nameplates above each controller labelled in hand-painted lettering: speed, voltage, excitation, the parameters the controllers regulated. Some of the handles are in mid-position; others are turned fully to one stop. The panel behind the controllers is painted in the standard pale industrial green of the plant, with subdued staining around the controller bodies from decades of operator handling. The cabling runs out the back of the panel to the equipment elsewhere in the plant.

Controllers of this kind were the manual interface to the plant's working machinery: each rotary handle adjusted a setpoint or selected a mode for the generator, the boiler feed, or the turbine governor. Operators at White Bay worked these controls through every shift across the working life of the plant from 1917 to Christmas Day 1983. After closure the controllers were left in their last positions. The bakelite handles and the brass escutcheons are mostly intact, the lettering on the nameplates still mostly legible. The settings reflect the operating conditions of the plant's final hours.