Machines and ghosts: politics, industrial heritage and the ... · Sydney, but from all over the country and all the corners of the globe. Its operations touched not only these lives

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Machines and Ghosts : Politics, Industrial Heritage andthe History of Working Life at the Eveleigh Workshops

Lucy Taksa

Sydney’s Eveleigh railway workshops operated for just over a century between the 1880sand the late 1980s when their railway operations were terminated. Since then Eveleigh hasbeen recognised as one of Australia’s important sites of industrial heritage. This paperexamines the political, legal and administrative conditions that have shaped Eveleigh’sadaptive re-use and heritage management. In doing so it highlights the processes by whichindustrial heritage is reduced to a narrow association with factory buildings, mechanicalrelics and technological history. At Eveleigh, I argue, this process is evident in the adoptionof conservation strategies for its ‘tangible’ heritage and the failure to formulate and implementa comprehensive interpretation strategy, which could enhance popular understandings ofthe context in which Eveleigh’s material culture was created and used, and also of its richhistory of working life.

Introduction

The initiatives pioneered by the Green Ban movement and the Whitlam LaborGovernment during the early 1970s helped to raise public consciousness about thecultural significance and social value of Australia’s labour and industrial heritage.Both left an enduring legacy still evident today in the continued existence of siteslike the New South Wales (NSW) Eveleigh railway workshops in Sydney. The Bansimposed by the NSW Builders Labourers Federation and its members preventedlarge-scale developments in both urban and non-urban areas. They not onlyprotected Sydney’s inner-city suburbs of the Rocks, Woolloomooloo and Glebe, butalso more generally encouraged popular appreciation of locales traditionallyassociated with working class people, as well as the houses in which they lived andthe factories in which they pursued their livelihoods.1 At the same time, the WhitlamGovernment’s formal recognition that places of cultural heritage formed part of theNational Estate, and its efforts to preserve them by legal regulation andadministrative techniques, established the framework for heritage policies lateradopted by State Governments.2

So how far have we come since those halcyon days of the 1970s? To what extenthave the material vestiges of working life been preserved? What measures havebeen employed to define and assess the significance and value of industrial buildingsand the artefacts contained in or associated with their use? Has attention been givento the context in which material culture was created and used, and its impact oneveryday life and workers’ identities, behaviours, customs, ideas and evenmemories? To what extent have such ‘intangible’ aspects of material culture beenincorporated in conserved urban and industrial landscapes? Has heritagemanagement provided public access to and enhanced popular understandings ofwhat it was like to live in inner-city working class areas and to work in factories? Or

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66 Labour History • Number 85 • November 2003

has conservation simply led to the classification of ‘industrial monuments’ and whatIain Stuart calls ‘object fetishism’, which privileges technology over social history?3

I want to address these questions by focusing on the heritage management ofthe Eveleigh railway workshops. These workshops were among the largest andmost advanced of their kind in Australia and they operated continuously for over ahundred years, becoming the ‘heart of the NSW transport system’ and the hub of avibrant working class community whose members were renown for their industrialand political activism.4 The 62 and a quarter acre site occupied by the workshopswas bought by the NSW Government in 1879 and it has remained in publicownership ever since. During the mid-1980s when it became clear that Eveleigh’sindustrial life was coming to an end, and after its operations were terminated in1989, protecting its material culture became a cause celebre. Many heritage architects,engineers and administrators, historians, politicians, trade unions, and of course,those who once worked there and their families, mobilised to publicly express theirconcerns over Eveleigh’s future. Their lobbying ensured that government fundingwas not limited to the site’s redevelopment and adaptive re-use, but also extendedto the conservation of its built fabric and its remaining machinery collection.

Eveleigh has been listed on Federal and State heritage registers.5 Since 1986 ithas been the subject of nine heritage assessment reports and conservationmanagement plans produced by or for the NSW Government. Mostly these haveemphasised Eveleigh’s architectural and technological significance.6 In addition,South Sydney Council’s heritage study acknowledged the site’s dominance of thesurrounding localities and its impact on residential patterns.7 Such formal recognitionhas certainly helped to protect Eveleigh’s more substantial buildings and itsremaining machinery collection. In the early 1990s, most of its moveable heritageitems were shifted into a couple of bays of the Locomotive workshops when thisbuilding was redeveloped as the Australian Technology Park (ATP). Theirconservation was recently completed.

Such attention to Eveleigh’s material culture has not, however, extended to itshistory. Funding for historical interpretation has been meagre in comparison withoutlays on redevelopment and conservation and has only resulted in design conceptsand plans that have been produced in a piecemeal fashion.8 Up to the present timeno resources have been allocated for the formulation, let alone the implementationof a comprehensive interpretation strategy for the entire site. A few panels havebeen erected in the Locomotive workshops over the last few years to explain themore prominent machines and their functions, but these have been rough andsketchy. Trained historians have had no input into their production. In effect,Eveleigh’s material culture has been disassociated from its social and labour history.

Overarching concern for the conservation of Eveleigh’s ‘tangible’ industrialremains at the expense of attention to their ‘intangible’ social and cultural associationsreflects the tension that exists between the fields of heritage and history all aroundthe world.9 This tension has not been as successfully negotiated at Eveleigh aselsewhere in Australia or in other countries, where railway workshop buildingshave been used to relate artefacts to the history of working life. While it is beyondthe scope of this paper to explain the reasons for this difference, I refer to a fewexamples later in order to indicate what can be accomplished given sufficient interestand funding.

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Taksa • Politics, Industrial Heritage and Working Life at Eveleigh 67

My main focus is on the local conditions that have influenced Eveleigh’s adaptivere-use and the management of its heritage. To acquaint readers with the site I beginwith an overview of its past operations and redevelopment. Both have, I argue,been dominated by an emphasis on technology. The importance of technology toEveleigh’s past significance has informed views about its heritage value andprovided the rationale for conserving its built fabric and material culture. However,emphasis on these ‘external forms’ has not only been inspired by technology but asimportantly by the politics of heritage management in this country. I use this termto refer to the interplay between a range of competing interests and the legal andadministrative framework that guides assessments of significance. By identifyingthe nature of this phenomenon I provide a context for developments at Eveleigh. Ithen examine the production and reception of the Conservation Management Plan forEveleigh’s Moveable Items and Social History, as well as subsequent outcomes, to showhow the politics of Eveleigh’s heritage management has helped to privilege thematerial culture associated with technology.

This Report was commissioned by the government-owned City WestDevelopment Corporation (CWDC), the NSW State Rail Authority (SRA) and theNSW Department of Urban Affairs and Planning (DUAP). Godden Mackay heritageconsultants were engaged to produce an Inventory of Eveleigh’s machinery collectionand they, in turn, hired my assistant, Joan Kent, and I to research and write a SocialHistory, and also another consultant to develop options for interpretation. The projectwas conducted between November 1995 and July 1996 and managed by the NSWDepartment of Works and Services’ (DW & S) Client Services Division. Progressreports were made to a Steering Committee composed of representatives from theabove organisations and also the ATP and the NSW Heritage Office.10 Given myinvolvement, the following account is written from the perspective of a participant-observer.11

There are three reasons why this Management Plan provides a valuable insightinto the relationship between industrial heritage and the history of working life.First, it focuses attention on both tangible and intangible heritage. Second, it offersan opportunity to examine the way resources are allocated, outcomes are receivedand actions are taken to conserve and interpret heritage assets. Finally, it throwslight on the nexus between technology and the politics of adaptive re-use becausethe ATP’s aim to use the Locomotive workshops as a centre that would help to‘catapult Australian industries into world-leader class next century’ necessarilyaffected the bays in which the industrial machinery was located, as much as theconservation of the collection.12 This association between industrial heritage andtechnological advancement has produced a double subordination. Eveleigh’s labourand social history has been submerged beneath the weight of the remaining industrialrelics, which have themselves been transformed into sculptures that now form abackdrop for the latest information technologies being promoted by the ATP.

Background: History, Heritage and Redevelopment

Located four kilometres south of Sydney’s Central Business District, the Eveleighworkshops are bisected by the main railway line between Parramatta and the CentralRailway Station. Like the NSW railways, Eveleigh’s operations and employees weremanaged by the NSW Department of Railways and Tramways. Clearing of the site

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began in 1880 and all major structures were completed in 1886. Full operations beganthe following year. From then on this place was used to build and overhaul railwayrolling stock and locomotives, to manufacture various metal components and toupholster and paint train carriages. Eveleigh was ‘a training centre for generationsof skilled people who became the backbone of Australia’s heavy engineeringindustry’ and rail transport system. It provided employment for tens of thousandsof workers not only from the surrounding inner-city or even outlying suburbs ofSydney, but from all over the country and all the corners of the globe. Its operationstouched not only these lives but also the lives of hundreds of thousands ofcommuters.13

‘1150 Men from the Loco Workshops, a unique group’Sydney Mail 27 September 1905, p. 803

Used with permission of State Library of NSW

Eveleigh’s buildings and its operations reflected the grandeur and dominance ofthe steam era. During the 1930s, around 540 locomotives were overhauled thereeach year. Two decades later, when the spread of dieselisation challenged the powerof steam, the site was transformed to accommodate this profound technologicalchange. During the 1960s the Running Sheds used for steam locomotives weregradually demolished to make way for a new Maintenance Depot for air-conditioneddiesel locomotives. Efforts to modernise the works were half-hearted and not wellfunded. By the time Eveleigh closed its doors, it was regarded as a technologicalbackwater.14 From then until the present its ‘evocative group of rambling buildings’has been a constant feature of Sydney’s rapidly disappearing industrial landscape.15

Eveleigh’s demise was prefigured by the organisational reforms that wereintroduced to the NSW railways in the early 1980s. These responded to the economicrecession of the times, the railways’ massive and long-standing public debt, and agrowing acceptance of economic rationalism and market-driven policies, which

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promoted privatisation and commercialisation of the public sector and extensiveretrenchments. Following its election in 1988, the Greiner Liberal/NationalGovernment actively pursued such policies and outcomes. To undertake a massiverestructuring of the state railways, the Government employed Ross Sayers whohad, as Chair of the New Zealand Railways, cut 5,000 jobs and reduced services.Eveleigh’s doors closed a year later. By 1991 the NSW railway authority’s total controlover the site had come to an end.16

The first major change occurred in May of that year when the NSW Governmentannounced its plan to help three of Sydney’s universities establish an advancedtechnology park at Eveleigh.17 The Australian Technology Park, Sydney Ltd (ATP)was subsequently formed as a registered company with a Board including bothuniversity and industry representatives. Its goal was to nurture technologicalinnovation in Eveleigh’s two Locomotive workshop buildings. Because both hadbeen formally designated as being of heritage value, the ATP was also given someresponsibility for the conservation of their built fabric and the remaining moveableheritage artefacts contained in them. In 1995 control of these two buildings wastransferred from the SRA to the CWDC, which assisted and supervised mostdevelopment and conservation work performed by or under the auspices of theNSW D.W. & S. Later, ownership of the machinery was also reassigned.18 The ATP’soccupation of the Locomotive workshops marked an important starting point forother changes to Eveleigh’s southern portion.

While the SRA retained the nearby Maintenance Depot and the Large ErectingShop, the Housing Commission obtained the remaining land on this side of therailway line, along with the Alexandria goods yards, for public housing. The Depotwas and still is used for railway purposes, while the Large Erecting Shop was leasedto 3801 Limited, a community-based organisation whose members restore heritagetrains and run tours around NSW. Subsequently, the Power House Museum alsobegan using this shop for its conservation work. By contrast, on the northern side ofthe railway line the SRA retained greater control for longer. Here the Carriage Wagonand Paint shops, the Stores and Chief Mechanical Engineers’ Office, either continuedto be used for railway purposes or were left vacant. During the late 1990s, somewere leased to a range of private companies.19

Given the high real estate value of this northern 8.6-hectare portion of the site, itwas only a matter of time before redevelopment was put on the agenda. During thelate 1990s the SRA engaged the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation toconsider possibilities for the future. While some stakeholders favoured a proposalto sell a large proportion of the land for a major residential complex, members ofthe public called for a museum or a heritage centre to be established here. In responseto the latter and also the need to conserve and re-use the heritage-listed buildings ina sympathetic manner, the NSW Government announced its intention to establish aTransport Heritage Park on 7 March 2000.20 Two years later, however, this proposalwas abandoned. The Carriage and Wagon shops will now be used for an arts andtheatre centre. At present this development is under the jurisdiction of the NSWMinistry for the Arts. The future of the Stores building, Paint shops and the ChiefMechanical Engineer’s Office is unclear. In the meantime, ownership of theLocomotive workshops and management of the ATP was transferred to the SydneyHarbour Foreshore Authority (SHFA).21

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The Government’s lack of support for a museum at Eveleigh stands in starkcontrast with developments elsewhere in Australia and in other countries. In theUnited Kingdom (UK), the United States of America (USA), the Netherlands,Germany and Sweden, governments, commercial enterprises, community groupsand historians have participated in railway heritage projects that have used railwaystructures and artefacts to highlight the railways’ contribution to national destinies,to culture and the texture of daily life in ways that are accessible to the public.22

Such projects illustrate the way material culture can be used to provide an insightinto social relationships, attitudes and behaviours, which ‘reflect, consciously andunconsciously, directly or indirectly, the beliefs of the individuals who made,commissioned, purchased, or used them and, by extension, the beliefs of the largersociety to which they belonged’.23

The mission of Pennsylvania’s Altoona Railroaders Memorial Museum, locatedin what has been described as America’s largest and most sophisticated railwayworkshops, ‘is to honour railroad workers and their significant contribution to the... railroad industry’. In 1988, the Museum ‘became a co-operating partner in theAmerican Industrial Heritage Project (AIHP)’, which was initiated by a federallyappointed commission to identify sites of ‘national significance’ and to seek out‘private non-profit agencies’ to develop them.24 This partnership provided fundingfor the preservation of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Master Mechanics building, anextensive historical research project on Altoona and a comprehensive interpretationplan ‘for the education, enjoyment ad enrichment of present and future generations’.On this basis, the museum has been able to tell the story of those who were engagedin ‘conceiving, building and running the transportation system that transformed anation’.25 Similarly, the California State Railroad Museum (CSRM) in Sacramentofocuses on those who built the railways and the adjacent Sacramento locomotiveworkshops. It is currently planning to transform these mainly derelict workshopsinto a ‘living industrial museum’, where vocational programs in traditional tradeskills will support the CSRM’s conservation work and exhibits will explain labourand local history and not just railway and engineering operations.26

Such efforts also extend to the UK where the STEAM museum was opened in2000 at Swindon’s Great Western Railway (GWR) workshops. Unlike the earlierexamples, STEAM is a ‘social history’ museum with a railway theme. Located in abuilding that originally manufactured the wheels for the GWR locomotives, its aimis to interpret manufacturing processes and to tell the stories of the workshops andGWR staff.27 Efforts to link conservation and interpretation are also evident inAustralia. In Queensland, the State Government has contributed $15 million for the$20 million railway museum recently opened in the boiler shop of the Ipswichrailway workshops, the rest of which remain in operation. In Western Australia, theState Government is currently developing a strategy for a cultural heritage centre atthe railway workshops in Midland. Both initiatives are emphasising the importanceof the workers’ experiences and stories. Their focus is not simply on material culturebut also working life.28

These examples illustrate the way public and community interest and historicalscholarship can be harnessed to enhance popular understanding of both tangibleand intangible heritage. The absence of such outcomes at Eveleigh does not reflecta lack of interest or scholarship. Articles on the site’s heritage, redevelopment and

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re-use, and its meaning for past workers have repeatedly appeared in the dailynewspapers.29 Over the last decade thousands of people have flocked to the sitewhenever Open Days have given them an opportunity to do so.30 Although fewscholars investigated Eveleigh’s history in its own right prior to its closure, manyrecognised its role in their broader studies of the railways and industrial relations.31

From the late 1980s postgraduates began producing work on the significance ofEveleigh’s built fabric and material culture, as well as its heritage management.32

Since 1996, its history has received more concerted attention.33 Yet none of thisextensive historical knowledge has been used to interpret Eveleigh’s material cultureor to recognise and celebrate its history of working life. The reason for this can, inmy view, be found in the politics of heritage management. To effectively explainhow this phenomenon has helped to subordinate Eveleigh’s history of working lifeto the conservation of its material culture and technology, I want to begin by definingthe ‘politics of heritage management’ and identifying the processes it involves.

The Politics of Heritage Management

Heritage is a political concept and a political practice. It promotes public rights andinterests over private interests in and claims over property. The ownership andmanagement of heritage assets involves a wide range of stakeholders whose interestsoften vary widely. Heritage and its management involves competition for land useand struggles for urban space, technological changes, legislation and regulatoryprocedures, and some degree of government funding.34 Certainly communalattachments to places under threat of redevelopment have been expressed in debatesand conflict regardless of whether the heritage assets are owned by government orprivate enterprises.35 But public ownership has created its own set of issues inAustralia, particularly in relation to industrial heritage. Government ownership oftransport and industrial infrastructure, coupled with government involvement inregulating heritage, has ensured the preservation and re-use of many no longeroperational industrial sites.36 In a democracy like ours, public ownership also affectsthe way popular opinion is expressed, received and acted on by governments. Mostpeople expect a greater degree of openness from the politicians and Ministers theylobby in pursuit of their claims, than say from private enterprises. Of course somegovernments are more receptive than others and at some times more than others, asis shown by protection of the Rocks and other such working class suburbs in Sydney,and the extensive public funding provided for heritage reports and conservationmanagement plans in NSW.

In negotiating such political pressures and processes, governments have adoptedheritage management practices that rely on the definition of clear criteria for assessingcultural significance. Colley makes two important points about this approach toheritage management. First, it ‘presumes no particular outcome’ other than a seriesof consecutive assessment procedures and such general goals as ‘preserving culturalheritage’ and ‘educating the public’. Second, it ‘implies a certain degree ofmechanistic neutrality’. In fact, far from being neutral, assessments of significanceinvolve competing interests, assumptions and methods. Who are the dominantplayers in this process? Although cultural significance and social value is usuallypredicated on the sentiments and attachments of specific communities, it is not theirmembers, but rather government heritage agencies and members of specific

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professions who are given the job of defining and applying assessment principlesand criteria. The most important are those elaborated by the Australian Committeeof the International Councils on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and contained inits Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Significance (generally knownas the Burra Charter). Because this document ‘was designed primarily to aid thepreservation and management of European historic buildings’, it promoted a‘somewhat Eurocentric view of cultural places’ and laid greatest emphasis on builtfabric and ‘tangible or material heritage’. At least until 1997, when the Charter wasrevised, these premises and guidelines established the framework for conservationstrategies and government funding.37

As a result of legislative requirements and the Burra Charter guidelines, architectsand archaeologists have tended to dominate Australia’s heritage industry and theconservation of our industrial heritage. As Peter Spearritt pointed out in 1991 aboutthe ‘scores of consultancy reports on particular industrial sites’ that had beenproduced over the preceding fifteen years, questions about the importance of builtfabric were left to architects, while assessments of the machinery contained in factorybuildings were the sole province of industrial archaeologists. By contrast, historiansrarely had any input into the production of inventories of heritage buildings or therelics contained in them. Numerous scholars have explained this exclusion bysuggesting that heritage managers and other heritage professionals have notappreciated the relevance and usefulness of the historian’s expertise.38 While it wouldbe true to say that increasing numbers of historians have been engaged on heritageprojects and involved in heritage interpretation since the 1990s, there is little evidenceof their work outside of museums. Built fabric and material culture continue to beprivileged in adaptive re-use of industrial heritage, while interpretation ismarginalised allegedly as a result of funding constraints.

This imbalance can, I believe, be explained by referring not just to the role playedby different professions in the heritage industry, but equally to the way theirmethodologies are valued and employed. Unlike other heritage professionals,historians emphasise the context in which material culture was created. Theconclusions they draw from the evidence contained in documents and oral sourcesabout past uses and the relationships between people and places are not easilymeasured. By contrast, architects and archaeologists focus greatest attention on‘external forms’, like built fabric and artefacts, which they then classify according totheir own disciplinary taxonomic hierarchies. The ‘scientific methods inherent insuch narrowly based empiricist approaches’ make it possible for the relativesignificance of various heritage assets to be measured and they create the impressionthat such measurement is neutral and ‘objective’. Such methods more easily fulfilassessment guidelines and are therefore favoured by heritage managers. At the sametime, however, this focus on things that can be measured ignores the ‘intangible’dimensions of heritage places and the possibility that social value can reside ‘in thespaces between the fabric’, in traditional uses or in personal and collectiveassociations. In short, the classification of material objects tends to reinforce existingprofessional biases, as well as prevailing ideological constructs and ‘comfortablemyths’.39 This provides the basis on which technology and ‘progress’ become exaltedwhile the history of working life remains concealed.

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Yet as Michael Pearson and Sharon Sullivan point out, management of heritageresources requires more than general agreement about value and relative significance;the production of heritage assessment reports and conservation plans representsonly the first step in a rather lengthy process. Organisational structures have to becreated and funding has to be obtained to ensure that proposals for conservationare acted on and heritage assets are made accessible and understandable to thespecific communities that value them, as much as to the public at large. Providingaccess is particularly critical when heritage assets are publicly owned and theirconservation has been funded from the public purse. It is a process that requireswhat is commonly referred to as ‘interpretation’.

‘Heritage interpretation’ is a term of art that is best defined as a communicationprocess, which relies on a wide variety of approaches and techniques, includingdisplays of material artefacts, reconstructions of entire settings, presentations ofdocumentary and oral sources, the use of films and the internet, and even re-enactments. Its point is not simply to describe and entertain but to reveal meaningsand relationships between different sorts of environments and human artefacts andactivities, and to explain them. Its key, either obviously or obliquely, is historicalevidence. Unfortunately, according to Pearson and Sullivan, relatively few historianshave been involved in interpreting Australia’s heritage places and artefacts. In theirview, heritage interpretation has generally been sparse and disorganised, popularand celebratory, and it has often resulted in the disassociation of many heritageplaces from their social histories. This outcome reflects Stuart Macintyre’s claimthat history has ‘an ambiguous status in’ Australia’s public culture. As he puts it, inrelation to heritage, it is the poor cousin; history attracts less funding, is often ‘ignoredby those in public life who seek to shape the future’, and it plays a far less prominentrole ‘as a source of public understanding’.40

This point is not intended to deny the role played by those professional historianswho have participated in heritage assessment or the quality of the thematic historiesthat have been produced for heritage studies. Rather, it provides an insight into theconstraints under which they have had to operate. There is no doubt that a growingemphasis on social value and cultural significance has created a greater role forhistorians in the heritage industry; their approach is far more suitable for exploringand explaining past experiences of place and the way social meaning is attached toplaces. We see the benefit of this development in the numerous oral history projectsthat have been undertaken in relation to large industrial enterprises and sites.41 Butwhile this trend is extremely heartening, it does not necessarily alter the prevailingemphasis on buildings that continues to dominate accepted approaches to themanagement of industrial heritage. The mere existence of oral testimonies does notensure a role for the history of working life in the redevelopment of abandonedindustrial sites and their transformation into convention centres, hotels and retailoutlets, massive residential villages and new ‘industrial parks’ dominated byinformation technologies and call-centres. While existing built fabric has beenretained in many such cases, albeit to varying degrees, representation of previoususes and labour history is either weak or missing all together. 42

Eveleigh basically conforms to this pattern despite general agreement about itssocial value. To identify the reasons for this outcome, I will now consider how thepolitics of heritage management has affected assessments of Eveleigh’s significance,and approaches to the conservation and interpretation of its material culture.

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The Politics of Eveleigh’s Heritage Management

Eveleigh highlights the challenges that industrial heritage poses for its owners andmanagers. Some of these are common to all such sites not just in Australia but allaround the world. Others are unique to this particular site. Ironically many of thefactors that make industrial heritage worthy of preservation also pose the mostserious problems. Because it tends to be associated with large-scale, derelict,contaminated industrial sites, industrial heritage requires substantial outlays forremediation or clean-up programs. At the same time adaptive re-use has to complywith modern building and safety standards and commercial imperatives. Suchfactors influence conservation and interpretative strategies. Most of Eveleigh’sheritage reports and plans addressed this problem. Throughout 1998 remediationof the Locomotive workshops was undertaken by the NSW DW & S, under thewatchful eye of the Eveleigh Locomotive Workshop Heritage Working Group,composed of government and community stakeholders.43

The absence of a central overarching authority with responsibility over the entiresite since 1991 has, however, hindered the remediation process. It has also precludedthe emergence of a holistic approach to redevelopment, stalled conservation workon the machinery collection, and prevented a comprehensive approach tointerpretation. The 1996 Management Plan for Moveable Items and Social History is theonly public document that contains a broad treatment of working life at Eveleigh.Yet to this day, it is the Plan’s Inventory that remains a constant reference point forthe site’s managers who continue to equate Eveleigh’s heritage and culturalsignificance with its built fabric and machinery collection. No effort has been madeto transform the interpretation proposals contained in this report into a coherentstrategy. This outcome can be directly attributed to the politics of heritagemanagement.

Eveleigh has been protected by legislative regulation and continued publicownership. It fulfils the basic tenets of the NSW Heritage Act, which came into forcein 1977 to enable the conservation of ‘buildings, works, relics or places of historic,scientific, cultural, social, archaeological, architectural, natural or aestheticsignificance for the State’. Eveleigh’s redevelopment and heritage management hasbeen governed by the criteria and guidelines outlined earlier, while compliancewith the terms of the above Act and its subsequent amendments has beenadministered by the NSW Heritage Office, acting on behalf of the NSW HeritageCouncil.44 Architects and archaeologists have played a leading role in identifyingand assessing Eveleigh’s heritage assets. Historians have played a minor role.

Certainly all heritage studies and conservation plans commissioned for the sitehave included a small section on history. But for the most part these have relied onrailway historians whose interest and expertise centres on railway technology andthe technical aspects of work associated with it. Eveleigh’s owners have favouredthis orientation. It supports the traditional taxonomic approach to industrialheritage.45 It also reinforces the teleological assumptions that underpinned viewsabout Eveleigh’s significance throughout its century of operations.

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Technology and Eveleigh’s Heritage Significance

At its height Eveleigh’s significance was based on its association with steam-poweredtechnology, its capacity for technological innovation, and the grand scale of itsbuildings, operations and machines. To all intents and purposes these sameassociations have been central to assessments of its heritage significance.

As an anonymous journalist put it in The Illustrated Sydney News in 1891, therewas no equal to Eveleigh’s machinery and appliances ‘in the Southern Hemisphere’,nor ‘out of England’. Similarly in 1922, Sea, Land and Air published an article, whichstressed that ‘[t]he collection of machinery at Eveleigh is magnificent’. In 1986, whenthe National Trust included Eveleigh on the Register of the National Estate, it wasdescribed as one of ‘the finest examples of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuryindustrial buildings’ in NSW and the ‘greatest monument to the’ State’s history oftransport. Two years later, Robert M. Vogel, then a curator with the SmithsonianInstitute’s Engineering and Industry Division in Washington, suggested that Eveleighwas ‘possibly the greatest industrial relic of its kind in the world’ because ‘turn-of-the-century railway shops’ like these had become ‘a great rarity world-wide’. In1990, Don Godden, one of Australia’s leading industrial heritage consultants, echoedthis view.46

The Eveleigh Railway Yards Locomotive Workshops Conservation Management Plan,produced by the NSW DW & S in 1995, responded to such conclusions by callingfor the production of an inventory of moveable items and relics. At the same time itpresented an important departure because it recommended the employment of anhistorian to undertake research and consult ‘with former workers and managersand with long term residents ... over an extended period’ in order to provide ahistorical context for the machines and ‘an adequate basis for site interpretation’.This proposal recognised the need for both technological history and ... social history.But it privileged the former by stressing that research ‘with former workers whooperated machines’ should elicit ‘operational information and stories associated with... [the] history of each machine’.47 This orientation influenced the way the ManagementPlan for Moveable Items and Social History was conceived. This study throws light on thepolitics of heritage management and adaptive re-use because it draws attention to theassumptions that underpin resource allocation and expectations of outcomes, as wellas how available resources affect subsequent actions.

Allies or Uneasy Bedfellows? Material Culture and Social History

Funding and time are the two major factors that constrain the heritage managementprocess. In this case, the latter proved to be the greatest problem. The three-monthdeadline set by the commissioning bodies was driven by the redevelopment process– only after the Plan was ratified by the NSW Heritage Council could a decision bemade about the number of bays in the Locomotive workshops to be retained intheir original condition for occupation by the moveable items. Not only did thisperiod prove insufficient for identifying, classifying and tagging the machinery, butalso hopelessly inadequate for conducting oral histories. In the event, the deadlinewas pushed back by two months. Even so this time frame had importantconsequences for the heritage interpretation proposals that were produced forinclusion in the Plan.

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Plan of the Locomotive Workshop Building c.1955© Richard Butcher (used with permission)

The heritage consultants showed their appreciation of public history, the valueof combining alternative disciplinary methodologies, and the mechanics of historicalresearch by allocating equal amounts of the project budget for the Inventory andthe Social History. Yet this did not alter the traditional imbalance between materialculture and the history of working life because the site’s managers placed greatestvalue on the Inventory. Not only did it support assumptions about Eveleigh’stechnological significance, but it also had practical value for conserving the moveableheritage items because it defined and assessed them. By contrast, Eveleigh’smanagers had only very general ideas about the nature of social history and oralhistory and very little understanding of the logistics involved in historical research,let alone organising and conducting interviews, or transcribing and evaluating theiroutcomes. Finally, despite their interest in some aspects of Eveleigh’s past life, theycould not see how the Social History could be used, which reflected the lack ofimportance they attributed to heritage interpretation. These three factors affectedthe way the Social History was produced and received and also the interpretationoptions that were included in the final report. In examining these outcomes I wantto show precisely how the interpretation of working life at Eveleigh has beensubordinated to the conservation of its material culture. I also want to suggest thatcontrary to Davison’s claim that ‘heritage is the cuckoo in the historian’s nest’, it ishistory that is the cuckoo in the heritage manager’s nest.48

The Cuckoo in the Heritage Manager’s Nest

As I mentioned earlier, growing recognition that the social value of heritage assetsis tied to the meanings people attach to past experiences has encouraged heritagemanagers to include oral history in heritage project briefs. But being attuned to the

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importance of social value is not the same as understanding the vagaries of oralhistory or appreciating its costs. Indeed, few heritage managers have sufficientpersonal experience with the method to be able to judge the time and funds required.The short period of time allocated for the project assumed that oral history can bedone quickly. Because Eveleigh’s significance had always focused on technologyrather than people, members of the Steering Committee had not entertained thepossibility that finding retired workers might be a problematic or lengthy process.They seemed to presume that retired workers had nothing better to do than beavailable for interviews.

Recognising the implications of the project’s time constraint, Joan and I begantrying to locate interviewees straight away. At the same time we had to do a thoroughsearch of the collections held by the Mitchell and State Libraries, the State RailwayAuthority Archives and State Records NSW because there were no secondary sourcesavailable specifically on Eveleigh’s social history. This work began in November1995 and continued until March 1996. In the meantime, interviewing commencedin January.

Both documentary and oral sources provided a wealth of information aboutEveleigh’s development and operations and also its skilled and unskilled blue-collarworkers, engineers and managers. From them we learned that by the early 1890sover 2,000 people were employed at Eveleigh and after 1907, when manufacturingof locomotives was introduced as a supplement to imports, this number increasedto over 3,000. We had neither the time nor the funds to investigate workforcefluctuations over subsequent decades or details about the women, migrants andIndigenous workers whose presence was mentioned in Eveleigh’s rank-and-filenewsletters, trade union journals and interviews. We did, however, discover thatmany employees worked at Eveleigh alongside their relatives for decades, thatincreasing numbers of migrants were employed from the early 1950s and that thetotal workforce was still around 3,000 in the mid-1950s before dieselisation took itstoll on employee numbers. We also found that, contrary to popular belief, womenwere continuously employed at Eveleigh to perform a range of functions, likecarriage upholstery, laundering, office cleaning, clerical work and typing, processwork in Eveleigh’s Munitions Annexe during World War II, and industrial nursingin the First Aid Stations after the war. From the 1950s they worked in Eveleigh’scanteens and as train cleaners. During the 1980s small numbers taught English tomigrant workers, while others obtained apprenticeships in occupations traditionallyassociated with men.49

Our efforts to locate these different types of workers through newspaperadvertisements, radio interviews and the Metropolitan Land Council bore little fruit.Although we did manage to find one member of the local Aboriginal communitywho had grown up on Eveleigh’s Redfern boundary, it would take years ratherthan months to find the more marginal members of Eveleigh’s workforce.50 In theevent only eight oral history interviews were undertaken and transcribed. Isupplemented these with relevant transcripts that had been produced earlier forthe NSW Bicentennial Oral History Project and for the Combined Railway UnionsCultural Committee’s Oral History Project. But like most of the interviews that wereconducted specifically for this project, these drew on the experiences and memoriesof white male workers.

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Besides having little understanding of the practical aspects of oral history, membersof the Steering Committee made assumptions about the nature of social history andtechnology that were at odds with scholarly approaches to both subjects. While thebrief to produce a Social History reflected the term’s acceptance and currency outsideof the academy, its close association with the Inventory indicated an expectationthat it would be focused on the use of Eveleigh’s machinery. My approach wasmore expansive and it drew on scholarly definitions, debates and conclusions notonly in relation to social history but also technology.

I began with the premise that defining social history was a problematic endeavourgiven the difficulty of isolating and separating its subject matter from other aspectsof people’s existence; the way they ‘get their living’, ‘their material environment’and their ideas. I was also aware that the term had been used to refer to threeoverlapping phenomena, notably: the poor, or working classes and their socialmovements; basic human activities (usually depicted as the ‘manners, customs andeveryday life’ and ‘history with the politics left out’); and finally, the impact ofeconomic developments ‘on the relationship between classes and social groups.’51

But because I recognised that this study was a work of Public History, I sought toaddress the needs and expectations of those who commissioned it by resolving suchdefinitional conundrums to their satisfaction. I therefore used the opportunity offeredby the Eveleigh Machinery Collection Interpretive Options Focus Group meetingheld on 1 March 1996 to ask members of the project’s Steering Committee to provideme with their definitions of social history. Their answers were most closely alignedwith the first two definitions I outlined above; all present agreed that it referred tothe history of ordinary people. But the questions asked at this meeting about themachines that had been mentioned by interviewees, what they had said about theway machines were operated and which were identified as most significant alsoindicated that this broad understanding of social history was mediated by anoverarching interest in mapping and identifying ‘the visible remains of the past’,and relatedly in Eveleigh’s technological history. Such interest was entirely in linewith the 1995 Conservation Report that had initially recommended an oral historyproject and also the conclusion drawn by earlier heritage studies (as well as morerecent ones) that technology forms the key to Eveleigh’s significance.52

My main problem with this conclusion was not simply that it neglected the socialdimensions of working life but also that it equated technology with machinery andengineering operations and therefore failed to recognise that it is composed ofsoftware as well as hardware. In other words, it involves a range of human activitiesand relies on knowledge and skills. My approach also assumed that its use is shapedby cultural and political contexts and that technology has immense implications forwork practices, workers identities and industrial relations.53 As a result, I relatedmost of the major tools and machines that had been acquired for the workshops tothe economic conditions and political factors that had influenced Eveleigh’soperations. I also focused on management, how workers responded to technologicalchanges and their effect on working conditions, how administrative andorganisational arrangements had shaped workplace identities and industrialmobilisation, as well as how the site’s operations affected the local environmentand life in the surrounding communities. Whereas previous heritage studies hadstressed the site’s layout and its architecture and technical operations, the Social

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History considered how national and even international developments had impingedon its evolution, and industrial and workplace conditions.54

My approach was influenced by the interviews with retired workers. Mostemphasised the impact of economic and political conditions on Eveleigh’s operations.They also mentioned specific events, including industrial disputes, workingconditions, workplace relations and also industrial, political and recreationalactivities, rather than the machines with which they had worked. Their testimoniesadded an important dimension to the documentary sources, which either providedadministrative and operational information or emphasised Eveleigh’s history ofindustrial activism.55 The oral sources painted a much more complex picture. Whilefellowship certainly existed, it operated within limits. Most mentioned how multiplelayers of attachment and division, based on occupation and skill, spatial andfunctional arrangements, religious and political affiliations, gender and ethnicity,had defined their workplace experiences. They all emphasised the dirt, smoke, noise,poor sanitation and danger that characterised Eveleigh’s working conditions.56

Because these aspects of working life had meaning for those who had once workedat Eveleigh, I gave them prominence in the Social History.

The absence of ‘operational stories’, coupled with the breadth of information onworking life ensured that the oral history was like the proverbial cuckoo in theheritage managers’ nest. The vagaries of the subjective realm provided a starkcontrast with the apparently ‘objective’ process of classifying Eveleigh’s moveableitems. Instead of presenting a narrative about the progressive march of technology,the Social History, together with the testimonies on which it relied, emphasisedconnections between impersonal economic and political forces and daily life in arailway workshop where people fulfilled their material needs, developed long-standing relationships with each other and struggled to improve their lot. Albeit todifferent degrees, the workers’ stories challenged the teleological assumptions abouttechnology that had shaped Eveleigh’s operational life and that had justified itsclosure and redevelopment.

History, Historians and the Problems of Interpretation

The project’s limited time frame not only had an impact on the production of theSocial History report but also on the possibility of developing a comprehensiveinterpretation strategy. The heritage consultants responded to these circumstancesby engaging a Tasmanian writer and historian to produce a range of interpretationoptions and it organised the earlier mentioned Focus Group meeting to identify‘the most important “messages” about the Eveleigh workshops’ which could atsome point in the future be presented to visitors.57 Unfortunately, this consultanthad no background knowledge of the Eveleigh workshops, nor did he have anytime to obtain it. This was the only occasion on which he met with the historianswho had just completed surveying the documentary sources and were stillundertaking interviews. As he later wrote in the Report:

The project program required that the interpretative approach be preparedwhile the historical research was underway ... Subsequent review of theinterpretative concept after the oral history was complete found that theconcept had great potential to stimulate controversy and provide achallenging experience.58

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By considering some of these controversial proposals I want to draw attention tothe way that interpretation can be reduced to a series of style ‘options’ for displayingartefacts rather than a means for explaining the context in which material culturewas created and used, and its relationship to workers’ identities, behaviours,customs, ideas and even memories.

The Interpretation Concept contained in the Management Plan stated that its‘central subject’ was technology and it presented a number of themes for displaypanels and exhibits, which privileged Eveleigh’s ‘relentlessly masculine’environment and its ‘muscular machinery’. The first two focused on railwaytechnology and infrastructure. One called ‘The Station’ proposed the ‘surrealisticpositioning’ of a railway station suspended on a mezzanine level, while ‘All that isSolid Melts into air’ centred on the display of a train carriage and locomotive engine.These proposals reflect the traditional orientation towards Eveleigh’s heritage,without providing any means of addressing the political aspects of public ownershipnor the railway’s impact on urban life and suburbanisation.59

The third exhibit, called ‘Hearth and Home’ focused on family and community.Its aim was to tell ‘the story of the women and the children of the Eveleigh workers’through an ‘Eveleigh worker’s house – circa pre-War’, ‘suspended in mid air’, whichvisitors could enter via a hole in the roof.60 The assumptions implicit in this proposalare historically flawed. According to oral evidence residential patterns varied widely.Most workers, and especially those apprentices who came from the country, hadlittle option but to live in the vicinity’s many boarding houses. In fact, few Eveleighworkers were able to buy their own homes before the 1950s. More to the point, fewever described their living conditions in the warm glowing terms implied by theexhibit’s title. One depicted the room he occupied with his father in nearbyChippendale as a brothel, while another called his ‘my little Black Hole of Calcutta’.61

Likewise the connection between home, women and community reflects a superficialunderstanding of the occupational community that evolved around the workshops.Kinship and neighbourhood ties were certainly important, but so too were industrialand political networks forged in the workshops and through trade union and Laborand Communist Party membership.62

Aptly called ‘Tools’, the fourth exhibit focused on machinery and engineeringprocesses, ‘industrial conditions, the process of work itself, the subdivision of labourwithin the plant’ and ‘the very definite divisions within the workers between casuallabourers and craftsmen, and among craftsmen themselves.’ One of its underlyingaims was to make the point that Eveleigh ‘never became a twentieth century stylefactory with mass assembly lines, but rather remained a nineteenth centuryworkshop where individual pieces were made as required for repair and assembly.’Here, too, attention was to be given to ‘the way women were brought in for munitionswork, and kicked out after the war ended’. This exhibit included a number ofproposed displays. ‘Real Blokes’ emphasised notions of physical strength, skill,‘masculine values’ and ‘the daily battle for bread’, while a ‘piece of machinery’formed the centrepiece for another, called ‘Hard Yakka’.63

These proposals reinforce prevailing myths and stereotypes about the genderednature of industrial heritage. They fetishise material relics at the expense of contextand intangible associations, and aestheticise the labour process.64 They ignore theheterogeneity of Eveleigh’s multi-cultural workforce and conceal the struggles waged

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for better conditions by its female and male employees. The suggestion that Eveleighdid not become a twentieth century factory indicates a lack of understanding of theprocesses involved in locomotive repair and maintenance, and the standardisationand mass production inherent in dieselisation, which occurred at Eveleigh from the1950s.65 Such lack of understanding also extends to recruitment and employmentpatterns at Eveleigh; other than times of economic upheaval, casual labour wasextremely rare in this public enterprise.66

Contrary to the guidelines for interpretation that were elaborated in the 1994Eveleigh Precinct Conservation Policy, the proposals failed to address the conditionsof working life or to acknowledge the wide range of skills, trades and occupationsthat were required for Eveleigh’s operations.67 More specifically, they implicitlychallenged the masculinity of the middle class men who performed mental andmanagerial work. Women were not ‘kicked out’ of Eveleigh in 1945; the MunitionsAnnexe was closed in 1943. 68 As I pointed out earlier, women were not outsiders, oronly temporary intruders; they were continuously employed at Eveleigh from 1887.There is no doubt that Eveleigh’s workplace culture emphasised masculinity. Butexclusive attention to this characteristic obscures what workers themselves valuedabout the place and what it meant to them.

To my mind the best insight into this intangible aspect of Eveleigh’s past can beobtained from an article entitled ‘the Heart of the NSW Transport System’, writtenby Stan Jones in 1939 on behalf of the Eveleigh sub-branch of the Australian RailwayUnion. Stan’s description of the ‘throbbing energy’ that pulsed ‘forth to theaccompaniment of the thump, thump, thump of giant presses torturing white-hotsteel into servitude’ suggests precisely the sort of masculine environment envisagedby the proposed exhibits. But for Jones it was ‘the human element’, rather thanEveleigh’s ‘[r]ow upon row of drab smoke-grimed buildings’ and the operationsconducted in them, that were critical. Without the 2,600 workers who made it ‘allpossible’, he added, ‘the roaring giant would be but a whispering ghost’. As Jonesconcluded: ‘We are more concerned with the men than the machines. They areimportant to the Labor Movement, politically and industrially’.69

Stan Jones was admittedly a prominent union official who spent his whole lifeat Eveleigh struggling to improve conditions. Despite his sexist language, neitherhe nor his fellow officials were simply concerned to represent the interests of theAnglo-Australian men who formed the majority of Eveleigh’s workers. On thecontrary, they promoted equal pay for the female munitions workers, acceptance ofthe industrial nurses, the special needs of migrant workers and the rights of allIndigenous Australians, including those who worked at Eveleigh.70 Of these strugglesand experiences nothing remains at Eveleigh itself.

The production of the Management Plan for Eveleigh’s Moveable Items and SocialHistory and its acceptance by the Heritage Council in July 1996 certainly respondeddirectly to the State’s legal and administrative requirements. But such officialrecognition did not ensure that action would be taken to conserve the site’s tangiblerelics or to interpret its intangible cultural heritage in ways that would educate thepublic about its social value. On the contrary, Eveleigh’s heritage was quicklysubordinated to the political and commercial imperatives of adaptive re-use.Although recommendations had been made for four bays of the Locomotiveworkshops to be excluded from redevelopment for the machinery collection and

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for heritage interpretation, the Heritage Council acceded to the ATP’s request forthe number to be reduced to two. Likewise, no funding was made available formachinery conservation or interpretation.

Machinery in Bays 1 and 2, Eveleigh Railway WorkshopsPhotograph: Peter Murphy 71

Architects, engineers and historians responded immediately by lobbying forfunding to prevent further deterioration of Eveleigh’s machinery collection and foran interpretation strategy. In 1997 the NSW Government responded by providing$300,000 for conservation on the understanding that the ATP would match this sum.This was an extremely positive development – it represented the largest grant evermade for heritage in NSW. But it also highlighted the subordinate position of historyvis-a-vis material culture. While it enabled the employment of a conservator for themachinery restoration, only a minuscule budget was allocated at this time for aninterpretation plan, which resulted in a six-page document focused solely onpresentation styles that was later supplemented by a design concept.72

Over the next two years the Eveleigh Locomotive Workshops Heritage WorkingGroup, which had been set up to oversee the site’s redevelopment, focused almostexclusive attention on built fabric and the machinery collection.73 Although it accededto my request for an interpretation sub-committee, it provided no funding orinfrastructure for this purpose. Only when I applied for an Australian ResearchCouncil (ARC) grant to produce a multi-media interpretation strategy that woulddraw on different information technologies did various stakeholders allocate some

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funds for interpretation.74 This project has certainly provided an opportunity to makethe intangible historic aspects of Eveleigh’s heritage more accessible to the public.However, its reliance on computer software and the Internet has tended to support,and perhaps also legitimate, the widespread assumption that technology forms thelynchpin of Eveleigh’s heritage significance.

Today, Eveleigh’s heart pumps no more. The roaring giant has been silenced.The ghosts of the thousands who breathed life into the NSW transport system havebeen left to wander in a few corners of the various buildings that have escapeddemolition as a result of adaptive re-use. Besides Eveleigh’s major workshopbuildings and machinery, little evidence can be found of their social history. Noeffort has been made to conserve the material culture associated with Eveleigh’swomen workers. The Locomotive workshops’ First Aid Station is long gone. TheMunitions Annexe was demolished in 1996. The First Aid Station and Shed adjacentto the Carriage and Paint shops, dating back to the late 1930s, remain derelict, butaccording to the 1999 Carriage Workshops Conservation Analysis, neither contain ‘fabricof considerable significance’.75

Washbasin display located in the National Innovation Centre(originally the New Loco building). Photograph by Peter Murphy.76

A single row of washbasins now stands in the foyer of the National InnovationCentre, previously the New Loco building, adorned by a minuscule plaque – hardlyadequate recognition of the long campaign that was fought to obtain these facilitiesin place of the dirty buckets in which workers had washed off the sweat and grimeof their daily labours for many decades.77 On 13 April 2003, the conservation of themachinery collection was finally completed and launched by the Minister Assistingthe Minister for Infrastructure and Planning, Diane Beamer. On this occasion, too,the SHFA organised a Heritage Walk around the shops, albeit with no fanfare orpublicity and no input from historians.78

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Conclusion

As the industrial era fades, Australians are gradually beginning to grapple with thecultural significance of their industrial heritage. While architects, archaeologists andheritage managers attach great value to the grand scale of Eveleigh’s buildings, itscollection of industrial relics and its technological history, these are not the soleattributes that have meaning for those who once worked there. Those who return toEveleigh are drawn by their memories of work, struggle and achievement, as wellas the relationships that they formed in the process. It is precisely these memoriesand emotional and social attachments that provide the key to understanding whyand how ordinary people value Eveleigh as a heritage place.

Heritage interpretation represents a critically important medium through whichsuch social value can be recognised. Potentially at least, it can provide access tohistorical knowledge about heritage places. But despite the growing recognitionthat industrial heritage and the history of working life are interdependent, theproduction of the Eveleigh Management Plan and Social History indicates that they arestill uneasy bedfellows. Emphasis on the conservation of material culture, withoutadequate attention to and funding for interpretation, has concealed the workers’experiences beneath Eveleigh’s tangible heritage. All that remains are ghosts andmachines.

Endnotes

1. Richard J. Roddewig, Green Bans: the Birth of Australian Environmental Politics: a Study in PublicOpinion and Participation, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1978; Pete Thomas, Taming the Concrete Jungle:the Builders Laborers’ Story, NSW Branch, Australian Building Construction Employees & BuildersLaborers Federation, Sydney, 1973; Meredith Burgmann and Verity Burgmann, Green Bans, RedUnion: Environmental Activism and the New South Wales Builders Labourers’ Federation, UNSW Press,Sydney, 1998.

2. Roddewig, Green Bans, pp. 72-3, 90-91, 96; Gough Whitlam, The Whitlam Government, 1972-5,Viking, Ringwood, 1985, pp. 546–50; Sarah Colley, Uncovering Australia: Archaeology, IndigenousPeople and the Public, Allen & Unwin, North Sydney, 2002, pp. 25, 27, 30-31.

3. Iain Stuart, ‘Stranger in a Strange Land: Historical Archaeology and History in post contactAustralia’, Public History Review, vol. 1, 1992, pp. 137, 140.

4. Stan Jones, ‘Eveleigh – The Heart Of The Transport System’, Daily News: Feature for TransportWorkers, 19 January, 1939; Lucy Taksa, ‘“Pumping the Life-Blood into Politics and Place”: LabourCulture and the Eveleigh Railway Workshops’, Labour History, vol. 79, November 2000, pp. 11-34;Lucy Taksa, ‘Workplace, Community, Mobilisation and Labor Politics at the Eveleigh RailwayWorkshops’, in Ray Markey (ed.), Labour and Community: Historical Perspectives, University ofWollongong Press, Wollongong, 2001, pp. 51-79.

5. The Eveleigh Workshops complex is listed (Database Number: 015903, File Number 1/2/033/0014) on the Register of the National Estate as a site of National significance (gazetted 26 April1988). Seven buildings within the Eveleigh complex were listed as heritage items on the NSWRegional Environment Plan No 26 (gazetted 17 November 1995). After changes were made to theState’s heritage legislation in the late 1990s the entire complex was listed on the State HeritageRegister as an item of State significance (gazetted 2 April 1999). The Workshops are also listed onthe SRA State Rail Section 170 Register as a heritage item of State significance and on the NationalTrust Register.

6. Don Godden & Associates, A Heritage Study of Eveleigh Railway Workshops, Sydney, 1986; GoddenMackay Pty Ltd, White Bay to Blackwattle Bay, Central to Eveleigh Heritage Study, vol. 1, Sydney, 1990;Schwager Brooks and Partners, Eveleigh Precinct Conservation Policy, NSW Department of Planning,Sydney, 1993; Wendy Thorp, Heritage Assessment: Archaeological Resources, ATP Master Plan SiteEveleigh, City West Development Corporation (CWDC), July 1994; Heritage Group State ProjectsDivision of NSW Department of Public Works and Services (DW & S), Eveleigh Railway YardsLocomotive Workshops Conservation Management Plan, Sydney, 1995; Godden Mackay, EveleighWorkshops Management Plan for Moveable Items and Social History, Sydney, 1996; Paul Rappaport,Chief Mechanical Engineer’s Building: 327 Wilson Street, Chippendale, Eveleigh Locomotive Workshops

ENDNOTES

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Conservation Management Plan, Sydney, 1997; Heritage Group, NSW DW & S, Eveleigh CarriageWorkshops: Conservation Analysis, Sydney, 1999; Simpson Dawbin, Large Erecting Shop ConservationManagement Plan, Sydney, 2003.

7. Tropman and Tropman, South Sydney Heritage Study, Sydney, 1995, vol. 2.8. Godden Mackay, Eveleigh Management Plan, vol. 1, 1996, p. 1; Peter Emmett, Eveleigh Locomotive

Workshop Interpretation Plan, Sydney, June 1997, pp. 1-7; Peter Emmett and Gary Warner, EveleighLocomotive Workshop Interpretation Design Concept and Plan, Sydney, 1998; Paul Davies, EveleighCarriage Works Interpretation Plan, Sydney, 2000.

9. David Lowenthal, Possessed By the Past: the Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History, New York,1996, pp. 1-3, 121-2, 125; Graeme Davison, The Use and Abuse of Australian History, Allen & Unwin,Sydney, 2000, p. 115; Craig Heron, ‘The Labour Historian and Public History’, Labour/Le Travail,vol. 45, Spring 2000, pp. 179, 185; Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory: Vol. 1, Past and Present inContemporary Culture, Verso, London, 1996, pp. 259, 263-66.

10. Godden Mackay, Eveleigh Management Plan, vol. 1, p. 1.11. Lucy Taksa, ‘Social and Oral History’, in Godden Mackay, Eveleigh Management Plan, vol. 2.12. Walter Brennan, ‘On the Track of New Technology: Redfern Railway Shed Hosts Info

Superhighway’, Sunday Telegraph, 30 June 1996, p. 50.13. NSW Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, 1879-1880, vol. 1, p. 32; ‘The Origin and

Growth of Eveleigh’, The Staff, 18 February 1930, pp. 103, 105; Schwager Brooks, Eveleigh PrecinctConservation Policy, p. 1; Rosemary Annabel and Kenneth Cable, ‘Historical Material’, in Tropmanand Tropman, South Sydney Heritage Study, vol. 2, p. 369; Annual Reports (An. Rep.) of theCommissioner For Railways for the Years 1879-82, State Rail Authority Archives (SRAA) R8\1, p.11, R8\3, pp. 11-12, 29-31, R8\4; An. Rep., 1890-91, SRAA R9/3, pp. 19-20; John Glastonbury,‘Foreword’, in R.G. Preston, The Eveleigh Locomotive Workshops Story, Australian Railway HistoricalSociety, NSW Division, Sydney, 1997, p. 2.

14. Preston, The Eveleigh Locomotive Workshops, pp. 15-17.15. Edmund Capon, ‘Introduction’, in David Moore, Railways, Relics and Romance: the Eveleigh Railway

Workshops, New South Wales, Caroline Simpson, Sydney, 1996, p. 9.16. Mark Hearn, Working Lives: a History of the Australian Railways Union (NSW Branch), Hale and

Iremonger, Sydney, 1990, pp. 188-9.17. The University of Sydney, the University of NSW and the University of Technology, Sydney.18. The CWDC was the body responsible for the management and redevelopment of state-owned land

in the City West region until it was subsumed by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority(SHFA). NSW Department of Planning, Building Better Cities: a Newsletter for Eveleigh, no. 2, July1993; no. 3, February 1994; no. 5, March 1995.

19. Schwager Brooks, Conservation Policy, p. 1; ‘Spotlight on the Eveleigh Housing Project’, CommunityHousing Forum: Quarterly Newsletter of the National Community Housing Forum, vol. 2 Issue 7, June 2,1998; NSW State Heritage Inventory; Ken Hocking, ‘Travel: Highland Fling’, The Sun-Herald, 27December 1998; NSW DW & S, Carriage Workshops Conservation Analysis, p. 214.

20. Government Press Release, 7 March 2000; Lucy Taksa, ‘Not Simply a Geographic Location: theFuture of Eveleigh’, The State of History, no. 2, May 2000; Nadia Jamal, ‘Railyards Brought Back toLife under Eveleigh Facelift’, Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), 24 April 2001.

21. Bryce Hallett, ‘Railyard Becomes Arts Central as Theatre Companies Roll in’, SMH, 21 March 2002,p. 5.

22. Rob Shorland-Ball (ed.), Common Roots – Separate Branches: Railway History and Preservation,Proceedings of an International Symposium held at the National Railway Museum, York, from 8 to 12October 1993, Science Museum for the National Railway Museum, York, 1994; Neil Cossons, AllanPatmore, Rob Shorland-Ball (eds), Perspectives on Railway History and Interpretation, NationalRailway Museum, York, 1992.

23. Mary C. Beaudry, Lauren J. Cook and Stephen A. Mrozowski, ‘Artifacts and Active Voices:Material Culture as Social Discourse’, in Randall H. McGuire and Robert Paynter (eds), TheArchaeology of Inequality: Material Culture, Domination and Resistance, Blackwell, Oxford, 1991, p. 150;Jules David Prown, ‘Mind in Matter: an Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method’, inRobert Blair St. George (ed.), Material Life in America, 1600-1860, North Eastern University Press,Boston, 1988, p. 19.

24. The AIHP is a nine county organisation in western Pennsylvania that was ‘formed tocommemorate and celebrate the industries of coal mining, iron and steel fabrication and railroadtransportation’. Peter D. Barton, ‘Horseshoe Curve and the Altoona Railroaders MemorialMuseum, Altoona, Pennsylvania’, in Shorland-Ball (ed.) Common Roots, p. 44.

25. Barton, ‘Horseshoe Curve’, p. 43, pp. 45-6.26. Stephen E. Drew, Kylie Williams Wyatt, and Catherine A. Taylor, ‘North American Perspective:

Development of the California State Railroad Museum and its Final Phase: the RailroadTechnology Museum at the Historic Southern Pacific Railroad Sacramento Shops’, in The Instituteof Railway Studies (IRS) and the Heritage Railway Association (HRA), Slow Train Coming: HeritageRailways in the 21st Century, Joint Conference held at the National Railway Museum, York, 20-23September 2001, pp. 16-1 to 16-12; ‘Documenting Our Workplaces: Historic American EngineeringRecord Project under way at Southern Pacific Sacramento Shops’, On Track: California State RailroadMuseum, no. 2, Summer/Fall 2000, pp. 1-2.

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27. Keith Falconer, ‘Swindon’s Head of Steam: the Regeneration of the GWR’s Works’, in LouisBergeron (ed.), Industrial Patrimony: Resources, Practices, Cultures, The International Committee forthe Conservation of the Industrial Heritage, no. 3, 2000, pp. 21, 26-27; Tim Bryan, ‘Steam Synergy’,Newheritage, March 2000, p. 28.

28. Destination Ipswich’, http://www.premiers.qld.gov.au/sectorwide/october2002; ‘The WorkshopsRail Museum Queensland – Ipswich’, http://www.heritagetrails.qld.gov.au/attractions/ipswich2.html; Midland Redevelopment Authority (MRA), Draft Concept Plan, August 2000; WestAustralian Government Media Statement, ‘MRA Report Shows Strong Support for Rail HeritageCentre’, 11 April, 2001; MRA, ‘Heritage Plans Take Shape’, The Midlander, Winter 2001, p. 1; ‘TheMetamorphosis of Midland’, The West Australian, 27 September 2002; West Australian GovernmentMedia Statement, ‘Wall of Names to Honour Workshops Workers’, 18 October 2002; WestAustralian Government Media Statement, ‘Artworks Interpret the Stories from the HistoricMidland Railway Workshop Site’, 11 December 2002.

29. Katrina Creer, ‘Ghost Trains Rattle into History ... but Their Grand Old Workshops Take a NewTrack’, Sunday Telegraph, 24 March 1996; Brennan, ‘On the Track’, p. 50; Graham Williams, ‘HistoryRepeats with Best Features: Innovation and Imagination have Lifted a Building from the SteamAge to the Space Age’, SMH, 12 November 1996; Anna Patty, ‘Losing Track of an Opulent Relic’,The Sun Herald, 7 July 1996, p. 27; Neville Gruzman, ‘Eveleigh Treasures will be Lost Forever’,SMH, 8 July 1997; Geraldine O’Brian, ‘Change of Luck for Rail Workers’ Wishing Wall’, SMH, 29March 1997; Lucy Taksa, ‘Preserving the Eveleigh Railway Workshops in Cyberspace’, Transnews,Official Journal of the Australian Services Union, NSW and ACT Services Branch [TransportDivision], March 1999, pp. 10-13; Lucy Taksa ‘Using the Information Superhighway to Interpret theHeritage of the Eveleigh Railway Workshops’, Rail and Road: the Magazine of the NSW Branch of theRail, Tram and Bus Union, vol. 91, no.3, July 1999, pp. 13-16; Geraldine O’Brien, ‘From Sweatshop toHard Labor, Their Station in Life’, SMH, 30 August, 1999; John Stapleton, ‘Rail Staff Roll Up forReunion’, The Australian, 30 August 1999; Mr. K. Rozzoli, ‘Eveleigh Heritage Railway Workshops’,NSW Legislative Assembly Hansard Extract for 5 April 2000; Eveleigh Railway Workshop PrivateMembers’ Statement Clover Moore, Independent Member for Bligh, NSW Parliament, 31 October 2002;Hallett, ‘Railyard Becomes Arts Central’, p. 5.

30. Australian Technology Park (ATP) Tour 21 March 1996; Back To Eveleigh Day organised by StateProjects, NSW DWS, 21 April 1997; Back to Eveleigh for Apprentices of 1941, 6 March 1998organised by the ATP; Celebrating Eveleigh’s Heritage – Open Day and Launch of the EveleighEmployees Register by the NSW Premier, The Hon. Bob Carr, held on 29 August 1999, organisedby Dr Lucy Taksa and Brian Dunnett together with the ATP, the Power House Museum, the PublicTransport Union and the NSW Folk Federation; Eveleigh Community Weekend: Launch of STEAMPOWER video produced by Lucy Taksa and Summer Hill Media, held on 21 April 2001 andorganised by the ATP and the SHFA.

31. R.F. Wylie, ‘The Rise and Decline of the Eveleigh Running Shed’, The Australian Railway HistoricalSociety (ARHS) Bulletin, no. 299, September 1962, pp. 140-141; G.A. Patmore, A History ofIndustrial Relations in the NSW Government Railways: 1855-1929, PhD Thesis, University ofSydney, 1985; David Burke, Man of Steam: E.E. Lucy – A Gentleman Engineer in the Great Days of theIron Horse, Iron Horse Press, Mosman, 1986; John Gunn, Along Parallel Lines: A History of theRailways of New South Wales, 1850-1986, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1989; Robert S.Lee, The Greatest Public Work: The New South Wales Railways, 1848 to 1889, Hale and Iremonger,Sydney, 1988; Hearn, Working Lives; Lucy Taksa, All A Matter of Timing: The Diffusion of ScientificManagement in New South Wales Prior to 1921, Unpublished PhD, University of NSW, 1993;David Burke, Making the Railways, State Library of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1995.

32. Pui Shven Cheong, The Eveleigh Railway Locomotive Workshops at Redfern, Sydney: Significanceand Recommendations, Unpublished Paper, School of Architecture, University of NSW, 1988;Richard K. Butcher, A Report on the preservation of Eveleigh Railway Workshops, Redfern,Unpublished Paper, Architecture, University of Sydney, 1992; Cameron White, Eveleigh RailwayYard: The Adaptive Re-Use of Heritage, Research Report, Masters of Heritage Conservation,University of Sydney, December 1995.

33. Preston, The Eveleigh Locomotive Workshops; Lucy Taksa, ‘Scientific Management and the GeneralStrike of 1917: Workplace Restructuring in the New South Wales Railways and TramwaysDepartment’, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, no. 4, September 1997, pp. 37-64; Lucy Taksa,‘All a Matter of Timing: Managerial Innovation and Workplace Culture in the New South WalesRailways and Tramways prior to 1921’, Australian Historical Studies, no. 110, April 1998, pp. 1-26;Lucy Taksa, ‘Handmaiden of Industrial Welfare or Armed Combatant? Considering the Experienceof Industrial Nursing at the Eveleigh Railway Workshops’, Health and History, vol. 1, no. 4,December 1999, pp. 298-329; Lucy Taksa, ‘The Heart of the NSW Transport System – the EveleighRailway Workshops’, in Lucy Taksa (ed.), Industrial Heritage Special Issue, Locality, vol. 10, no. 1,1999, pp. 11-21; Taksa, ‘Pumping the Life-Blood’, pp. 11-34; Lucy Taksa, ‘Citizenship andLocomotive Manufacture at the New South Wales Eveleigh Railway Workshops’, in Greg Patmoreand Mark Hearn (eds), Working The Nation: Working Life and Federation 1890-1914, Pluto Press,Sydney, 2001, pp. 203-223; Taksa, ‘Workplace, Community, Mobilisation’, pp. 51-79; Lucy Taksa,‘Spatial Practices and Struggles over Ground at the Eveleigh Railway Workshops’, in Phil Griffiths

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and Rosemary Webb (eds) Work, Organisation, Struggle: Proceedings of the Seventh National Conferenceof the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Australian National University, Canberra,2001, pp. 231-237.

34. Graeme Davison, ‘The Meaning of “Heritage”‘, in Graeme Davison and Chris McConville (eds), AHeritage Handbook, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1991, p. 7; Samuel, Theatres of Memory, p. 306; Colley,Uncovering Australia, pp. 22-3.

35. Tom Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors: the Antiquarian Imagination in Australia, Cambridge UniversityPress, Melbourne, 1996, p. 238, pp. 248-51.

36. Peter Spearritt, ‘Money, Taste and Industrial Heritage’, in John Rickard and Peter Spearritt (eds),Packaging the Past: Public Histories, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1991, p. 43; Colley,Uncovering Australia, pp. 25-30; Sheryl Yelland, ‘Heritage Legislation in Perspective’, in Davisonand McConville (eds), A Heritage Handbook, pp. 43-61.

37. Chris Johnston, What is Social Value: a Discussion Paper, Technical Publications, series no. 3,Australian Heritage Commission, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1994, pp.1, 19-22; Colley, Uncovering Australia, pp. 32-5, 37-39.

38. Colley, Uncovering Australia, pp. 17, 24-5, 58; Spearritt, ‘Money, Taste and Industrial Heritage’, pp.35, 37; Graeme Davison, ‘Paradigms of Public History’, in Rickard and Spearritt (eds), Packaging thePast, p. 8; Max Nankervis, ‘Some Recent Directions in the Conservation of the Built Environment’,Journal of Australian Studies, no. 30, September 1991, p. 52.

39. Chris McConville, ‘In Trust? Heritage and History’, Melbourne Historical Journal, vol. 16, 1984, pp.68-9, 308; Johnston, What is Social Value?; Michael Pearson and Sharon Sullivan, Looking AfterHeritage Places: the Basics of Heritage Planning for Managers, Landowners and Administrators,Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1995, pp. 138-41, 168-9, 291-2, 308-9. See for example:Grace Karskens, ‘Public History – Academic History: the Common Ground’, Public History Review,vol. 1, 1992, p. 21; and Grace Karskens, ‘Crossing Over: Archaeology and History at theCumberland/Gloucester Street Site, the Rocks, 1994-1996’, Public History Review, vols. 5/6, 1996-97,pp. 30-48.

40. Pearson and Sullivan, Looking After Heritage, pp. 16-17, 288-90, 292-3; Stuart Macintyre, TheNecessity of History, The Inaugural History Council Lecture, 1996, History Council of NSW, Sydney,1997, pp. 11-12. See also: Davison and McConville (eds), A Heritage Handbook; Graeme Davison,‘Heritage’, in Graeme Davison, John Hirst and Stuart Macintyre (eds), The Oxford Companion ToAustralian History, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1998, pp. 308-9.

41. Johnston, What is Social Value?, pp. 1, 7-11. See for examples: Pat Mathew, ‘An Oral History ofTasmania’s Hydro-Electric Commission’, Oral History Association of Australia Journal (OHAAJ), No.15, 1993, pp. 116-7; Rosemary Block, ‘Everybody had a Cousin at Colgates: the Community of theColgate-Palmolive Factory, Balmain Sydney: the Colgate-Palmolive Oral History Project’, OHAAJ,no. 18, 1996, p. 78; Rosemary Block, ‘Can the Doers Talk? Crossing Borders and New Technologies:the Institution of Engineers’ Oral History Project’ OHAAJ, no. 19, 1997, pp. 66-72.

42. Cindy Martin, ‘Gasworks Sparks Village for 5,000’, The Sun-Herald, 12 November 2000, p. 70;Anthony Radford, ‘New Recipe for Old Arnott’s Site’, The Inner Western Suburbs Courier, vol. 116,no. 49, 4 December 2000, p. 1.

43. Drew, Wyatt, and Taylor, ‘North American Perspective’, pp. 16-1 to 16-12; Barton, ‘HorseshoeCurve’, p. 45; Schwager Brooks, Eveleigh ... Conservation Policy, 1993; NSW DW & S, Minutes of theEveleigh Locomotive Workshop Heritage Working Group, 1998.

44. Yelland, ‘Heritage Legislation’, p. 55; Colley, Uncovering Australia, pp. 25, 30.45. See for example: Eveleigh Carriage Workshops Conservation Analysis, 1999; Large Erecting Shop

Conservation Management Plan, 2003.46. Anon., ‘The NSW Railway Workshops at Eveleigh: a State Enterprise’, The Illustrated Sydney News,

18 July 1891, pp. 11, 13; Hamilton Hyde, ‘The Australian Engineer: Splendid Work at EveleighWorkshops’, Sea, Land and Air, 1 June 1922, pp. 176, 179; Letter from Robert M. Vogel to CarlDoring, 20 June 1988 (Courtesy David Sheedie); Don Godden, ‘Eveleigh: Sydney’s Rail Era Relic ofWorld Standing’, The National Trust Magazine, no. 54, April 1990.

47. NSW DW & S, Eveleigh Railway Yards ... Management Plan, Section 2.8, p. 6.48. Davison, ‘The Meaning’, p. 12.49. Government Gazette Employee Lists, 1887-1939 and Railway Personal History Cards, originally

held by SRAA now State Records NSW, Series: 11/16552 to 11/16745, and SRAA; Mr. Guthrie,‘History of Eveleigh Workshops’, Unpublished Notes, c.1955, SRAA, A88/44 – Box 3, p. 7, andCorrespondence: Assistant Chief Mechanical Engineers to F.P.H. Fewtrell, Works Manager, 14April, 1955, SRAA, A88/44 Box 3, p. 5; Interviews with: Joyce Hitchen, 15 October 1996; AnnPatrick, 5 January 1999; Elisabeth Wheatley, 28 September 1999; Pat Holdorf, 17 May 1999.

50. Interview with Alan Madden, 16 April 1996, in Godden Mackay, Eveleigh Management Plan, vol. V,Oral History Transcripts. In 1998 I received a Large ARC grant for a project entitled, Technology,Work, Gender and Citizenship at the Eveleigh Railway Workshops Precinct: an HistoricalInterpretation of Landscape, Identity and Mobilisation, which provided the resources necessary tofollow up on the discoveries made during 1995-6.

51. Eric Hobsbawm, On History, Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1997, pp. 75; also pp. 71-73.52. Davison, ‘Paradigms’, p. 9; Samuel, Theatres of Memory, pp. 277, 303; NSW DW & S, Eveleigh

Railway Yards ... Management Plan, Section 2.8, p. 6.

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53. Judy Wajcman, ‘Technological A/genders: Technology, Culture and Class’, in Lelia Green & RogerGuinery (eds), Framing Technology: Society, Choice & Change, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1994, p. 6;Evan Willis, ‘Introduction’, in Evan Willis (ed.), Technology and the Labour Process, Allen & Unwin,Sydney, 1988, p. 2; Daniel R. Headrick, The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age ofImperialism, 1850-1940, Oxford University Press, New York, 1988, pp. 9-13, 52, 304-7, 316; Sol Encel,‘Social Implications of Technological Change’, in Russell D. Lansbury & Edward M. Davis (eds),Technology, Work and Industrial Relations, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1984; Melvin Kranzberg,‘Overview, Technology and History: “Kranzberg’s Laws”,’ in Terry S. Reynolds and Stephen H.Cutcliffe (eds), Technology and the West: a Historical Anthology from Technology and Culture, Universityof Chicago Press, Chicago, 1997, p. 6.

54. Taksa, ‘Social and Oral History’.55. Railway and Tramway An. Rep.s; The Railroad, 1928-1947; Eveleigh News, 1954-1982.56. Godden Mackay, Eveleigh Management Plan, vol. 5.57. Godden Mackay, ibid., vol. 6 – Appendices: Appendix J – Richard Flanagan, ‘Interpreting the

Eveleigh Workshops’, p. 1.58. Ibid., vol. 1, 10.0 ‘Interpretative Concept’, p. 103.59. Ibid., pp. 109-1260. Ibid., pp. 112-3.61. Interviews with: Bob Matthews, 20 February 1996; Jeff Aldridge, 16 March, 1999; The Lamp,

November 1948, p. 7.62. Lucy Taksa, ‘Rethinking Community: Social Capital and Citizenship at the Eveleigh Railway

Workshops’, in Robert Hood and Ray Markey (eds), Labour and Community: Proceedings of the SixthNational Conference of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, University of Wollongong,Wollongong, 1999, pp. 183-190.

63. ‘Interpretative Concept’, p. 114.64. Samuel, Theatres of Memory, pp. 278, 303, 308.65. Albert J. Churella, From Steam to Diesel: Managerial Customs and Organizational Capabilities in the

Twentieth-Century American Locomotive Industry, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1998, pp. 10,16-20, 97.

66. Government Gazette Employee Lists, 1887-1939, SRAA.67. Schwager Brooks, Conservation Policy, p. 28.68. NSW Government Railways, Railway at War: a Record of the Activities of the NSW Government

Railways in the Second World War, Sydney, n.d., SRAA M27 [1], pp. 22, 46, 52-54, 56-57.69. Jones, ‘Eveleigh’.70. See The Railroad, 1930-1945, The Magnet, 1934-1953; Eveleigh New, 1954-1967.71. Peter Murphy Photograph produced for Lucy Taksa and the ARC funded project: A Model for

Change at the Eveleigh Railway Workshops Precinct: Using Social and Industrial Heritage as tools forUrban and Community Renewal Project.

72. Chris Johnson, Chair, Eveleigh Locomotive Workshop Heritage Working Group, EveleighLocomotive Workshop Newsletter, vol. 1, no. 1, February 1998, pp. 3-4; Emmett, Eveleigh ...Interpretation Plan, 1997; Emmett and Warner, Interpretation Design, 1997/8.

73. Members included representatives of the Heritage Branch – NSW, the City West DevelopmentCorporation, the ATP, NSW Department of Urban Affairs and Planning, the Museum of AppliedArts and Science, the Heritage Office of NSW, Otto Cserhalmi and Partners ConservationArchitects and Lucy Taksa.

74. The Project was funded by the ARC’s Strategic Partnerships with Industry Research and Trainingscheme on a dollar for dollar basis. Entitled: A Model for Change at the Eveleigh Railway WorkshopsPrecinct: Using Social and Industrial Heritage as Tools for Urban and Community Renewal, it initiallyrelied on support from 10 Industry Partners. The number later grew to fourteen. The projectproduced a video entitled, STEAM POWER and a database of employees. A heritage website iscurrently nearing completion.

75. NSW DW & S, Eveleigh Carriage Workshops Conservation Analysis, 1999, p. 193.76. Peter Murphy Photograph, op.cit.77. The Magnet, 11 November, 1933, p. 4; April 1935, p. 2; June 1944, p. 2; July 1944, p. 2; Eveleigh News,

9 June 1954.78. SHFA, ‘Eveleigh Heritage Walk Recreates History at ATP’, http://www.shfa.nsw.gov.au/

contents/news_display, 10 April 2003.

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