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Vintage Telephony and Telecomms Vintage Telephones, Telephony and Telecomms Equipment |
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17th Mar 2023, 11:21 pm | #21 |
Nonode
Join Date: Sep 2017
Location: Stockport, Cheshire, UK.
Posts: 2,002
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
I still see the brackets around with twin insulators on older buildings which haven't been taken down.
Stockport still has many posts with a ring of insulators.
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18th Mar 2023, 10:37 am | #22 |
Heptode
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK.
Posts: 643
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
Open wires I remember them well. In anything above a moderate wind, if not tensioned correctly, adjacent wires could twist together, known in the trade as "wrap ups". The official cure was to climb and retension, the quick clear was just shake the pole or the stay wire! In winter to avoid getting out of the van just nudge the pole with the front bumper (Morris minor)
In my very rural patch the local farmers would do it themselves! Happy days!
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18th Mar 2023, 11:57 am | #23 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, UK.
Posts: 3,310
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
David W.
That reminds me………… About thirty years ago I had a fault at a customer in Bristol. When I arrived, I could see they were fed by open wires, one of which had broken and( fortunately, as the pole was across the road from the house) wrapped itself round the other. A quick clear I thought, so climbed the pole to investigate. The wire had indeed broken, at the pole end, so I wondered if I could give the customer temporary service by joining the wire with a large crimp connector. This proved impossible as the wire was too hard. I pulled the broken wire tight, and in order to see if I could re-fit it into the existing crimp, bent it at 90 degrees. The wire promptly snapped at the bend. Foolishly I repeated this a few more times, each with the same consequence. So there I am, up a pole holding onto a wire, which is now too short to reach the pole, across a busy road and I can’t let go without it falling into the traffic. I was just trying to work out how to get out my linesman’s phone, and connect it to the customer pair in order to make a call to control and summon help when another engineer arrived to do an install at the next but one property. A quick shout to explain my situation, and he was able to stop the traffic for me to drop the wire. A new style dropwire was erected and another story for the memoirs created!
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18th Mar 2023, 2:34 pm | #24 |
Octode
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Dundee, UK.
Posts: 1,813
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
That's a very memorable story Tim, thanks for telling it.
Anyone who has been in a similar siuation can readily empathise. I believe that open pair wires gained prominence in the early days of telegraph systems because, apart from cost, insulating materials simply weren't good enough for underground cables. PMM |
18th Mar 2023, 9:49 pm | #25 | |
Heptode
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Flintshire, UK.
Posts: 707
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
Quote:
These poles are undated which indicates great vintage and note the original single spindle on the top for the original single wire earth return telegraph circuit. The arms were added at a later date to provide the five junctions to the exchange at Diabaig when it opened in 1937. A drivable road did not reach Diabaig until the 1970's! It was only reachable on foot or by sea until then. The junctions were still in use until later the day I took the photos in March 1994 on the day of change-over of Diabaig to digital working. The route was some ten miles long starting off at sea level by the lochside at Torridon and climbing to over 1600 ft which such steepness the the top of one pole was lower the the bottom of the next one up the mountain! Imagine maintaining that route! Any one know of any bare copper junctions still in use after that date? I must digitise the video I made of the entire route. |
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7th Apr 2023, 5:37 pm | #26 | |
Nonode
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: West Midlands, UK.
Posts: 2,181
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
Quote:
Do you remember the "old " style dropwire clamps ? |
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7th Apr 2023, 6:43 pm | #27 | ||
Heptode
Join Date: Feb 2022
Location: Leicestershire, UK.
Posts: 690
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
Quote:
There was also a wide drop wire clamp for experimental 3 wire drop wire whereby the 3rd [middle] wire was to extend the pole earth down to the sub's equipment. Happy days indeed.... Rog |
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12th Apr 2023, 4:30 pm | #28 | |
Nonode
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: West Midlands, UK.
Posts: 2,181
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
Quote:
From my GPO days ,I always remember the grey stuff as n0 3, with no4 being the heavy duty black coated stuff.( much loved by crofters in Ardumarchian area for running mains to their outbuildings) Discretion in banning the grey stuff ( in my day ) was given to the district "engineer" on the basis of storm liability. |
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19th Apr 2023, 2:10 pm | #29 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Southport Lancashire, UK.
Posts: 3,233
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
As mentioned in a previous post there are no overhead wires in Southport and the old Borough Council would not allow them.
My son has recently moved to a large old Victorian house and had the phone reconnected. The wires coming from underground are lead covered but still give a perfect service including broadband. Any ideas on how old they may be?
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19th Apr 2023, 5:40 pm | #30 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Brentwood, Essex, UK.
Posts: 5,339
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
When I was a student, I spent the summer of 1968 doing vacation training at the STC Submarine Cables Lab at North Woolwich. One of the older engineers once reminisced about his time as a young engineer with ITT in Eastern Europe after the First World War when they were modernising old telephone systems that were being brought under state ownership. In one place, the original telephone company had simply provided the central exchange, and customers had had to provide, not only their own telephone instrument, but also install themselves the wires linking it to a pair of teminals in the exchange. As well as copper and iron wires, post-war shortages meant that a number of circuits had utilized barbed wire reclaimed from battlefields. Their job had involved replacing this chaotic arrangement with the then-current state of the art wires and telephones.
Last edited by emeritus; 19th Apr 2023 at 5:45 pm. |
25th Apr 2023, 10:41 am | #31 | ||
Tetrode
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Rhondda Cynon Taff, Wales, UK.
Posts: 88
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
Quote:
combination of 750 ohms and 150 nF |
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25th Apr 2023, 1:44 pm | #32 |
Nonode
Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Cambridge, Cambs. UK.
Posts: 2,198
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
600 ohms RIP.
Martin
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25th Apr 2023, 1:46 pm | #33 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Oxford, UK.
Posts: 17,846
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
I recently saw a 1960s semi with dual porcelain insulators as if it had bare wire phone service at one point. Looked very incongruous
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25th Apr 2023, 5:18 pm | #34 |
Heptode
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Flintshire, UK.
Posts: 707
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
I've seen insulators these today! They go back to National TelCo days.
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26th Apr 2023, 3:00 pm | #35 |
Dekatron
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 18,715
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
I didn't have to go far to take these images, I'm standing on my front doorstep!
I'm not sure if Nick's remark was prompted because they were specifically porcelain, which my examples aren't, but I do wonder if there are variations in local practice abort whether old bracketry is reused when a more modern dropwire is flown, and then subsequently get removed when roofline repairs are made. What is undoubtedly true, is that insulators remaining on poles varies considerably with geography, they tend to remain in rural Scotland and rural Wales (probably due to Ian's influence??) I have even noticed a difference between the suburbs of Manchester. Here in North Manchester they largely disappeared decades ago, but where my daughter lives in South Manchester they are quite common, and I've even seen distribution poles with insulators, and optical fibre distribution . Incongruous or what?
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30th Apr 2023, 9:07 pm | #36 |
Dekatron
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 18,715
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
The old and the new.
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1st May 2023, 2:05 pm | #37 | ||
Octode
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Rayleigh near Southend-On-Sea, Essex, UK.
Posts: 1,880
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
Hello,
I remember as lad in the late 60’s seeing the “cork bottle stoppers” on lines spanning width of the road, and wondered ever since what they were for. One road in particular was Manners Way in Southend as the “cork bottle stoppers” on this road just stuck in my mind. Some 25 years later in the late 80’s I bought a house on Manners Way, and often wondered about the “cork bottle stoppers” I saw as lad back in the 60’s. Terry Quote:
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2nd May 2023, 9:07 am | #38 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Penrith, Cumbria, UK.
Posts: 3,687
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
Pretty sure you're correct, Roger. The telephone poles around Workington in the vicinity of pigeon lofts had wires fitted with them.
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2nd May 2023, 10:06 am | #39 | |||
Heptode
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Flintshire, UK.
Posts: 707
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
Quote:
The cork items fixed to the overhead wires were known as 'Guards, Game' and came in three types(see attached description from the GPO's ' Vocabulary of Engineering Stores' in the late 1950's) for different sized overheat wires. Usually fitted either in areas where there were pigeons kept by locals or in areas where an estate had lots of game birds. I still carry a few in my GPO van in case I need to fit them! |
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2nd May 2023, 12:24 pm | #40 |
Nonode
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Spalding, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, UK.
Posts: 2,859
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Re: Bare wire phone lines
Plus the small wooden stepladder you had from me?
Best wishes, Rob
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