Turbine Hall Crib Room

The crib room adjacent to the turbine hall at White Bay Power Station is a rectangular space with a timber-framed lunch table down the centre and a row of lockers along one wall. The table surface is worn and carries cup ring marks and cigarette burns. Bench seats run along both sides. A large enamel-top counter with a double sink is fitted at the far end, the taps still connected. Above the sink a board lists the shift start and finish times for the turbine hall crew. A steel crib rack is fixed to the wall where workers stored their food for the shift. The ceiling has timber-battened lining boards painted over many times. A wall-mounted clock casing is empty of its mechanism.

Crib rooms at White Bay Power Station gave the turbine hall operators and maintenance crews a place to eat meals and take breaks without leaving the plant. Working a coal-fired generating station required continuous attention to the Babcock and Wilcox boilers, the Parsons turbines, and the associated cooling and feedwater systems. Shift workers at White Bay rotated on a schedule that kept the station staffed around the clock from 1917 to Christmas Eve 1983. The crib room was positioned close enough to the turbine hall that workers could return quickly if an alarm required attention. After the shutdown the crib facilities were left in place as part of the station's social and operational history, documented in the 1999 heritage listing.