With Mike holding the Fort with his trusty 1960's SA9083 tester at the cable head in Winchcombe, Kevern and Paul set off to firstly check out a possible just before the Tunnel. They then moved on the Far Stanley and found some crimps that could be improved. There is no truth in the rumour that Paul met Dr Livingstone whilst exploring the undergrowth!. Mike then moved to the other end at Gotherington. A quick test and, why should we be surprised, it worked!!
So after two years of reports of gradual stages, we now have a full set of similar Concentrators throughout the system. And a fully operational Box to Box system as well (not that our Strowger kit ever lets us down!)
Hopefully this standardisation will make life easier for the Signalmen as well as being more attractive within the Signal Boxes themselves
Heres a few pics of the finished installations, sorry there's no pic of Cheltenham. I'm sure there's one somewhere
As the waitress says " Enjoy"
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| Toddington |
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| Winchcombe |
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| Gotherington |
Look really good - even better THEY WORK! Need wooden phones of the same vintage to go with them though, or is that just asking for trouble? When I worked on the SVR, we were fortunate to be able to have some really old phones to compliment the system in boxes and offices alike. It was a long time ago however, and I suppose the phones of which I speak were more readily available then. Some had independent mic. mounted on the phone body and separate receiver. The same with the dial phones - even if the main phone exchange at Bewdley did look as if it had descended from mission control Huston! Regards, Paul.
ReplyDeleteThank you Paul, as you say THEY WORK and Signalmen can understand them. Problem with the older wooden cased ones is that as I understand Toddington station heritage reference date is about 1945-1950. We are considering replacing the 706cb ( Sweeney Phone!) with a the previous model, the 332cb. Indeed I have renovated one ready for this,. Unfortunately the 332 is not as tough being made of Bakelite rather than ABS and the handset may not survive being dropped. That of course puts the whole concentrator out of use. Its the same at Winchcombe whose heritage date is earlier. We do have some of the wooden cased phones, in fact they are now fixed up in some places but not working. The insides are pristine waxed cotton wiring and I am reluctant to rip it all out whilst they grow in stature as future museum pieces.
ReplyDeleteLots to think about
Mike