I spent most of all my GPO years as a TO responsible for a major hub of the Defence Telecoms Network built just before WW2. After nearly ten years deep underground working on vintage kit, I left and joined STC and started as a commissioning engineer for TXE2. One of the first I was at was the TXE2 at
Rhosllerchrugog near Wrexham in North Wales. It was to my knowledge the only TXE2 to directly replace a manual exchange – it was the last manual exchange in the Wales & Border Counties Region. The CBS2 manual exchange was located in a terraced home and still has
DP1 (Distribtion Pole No 1) in the back garden. Zoom out and exchange was in the white pebble-dashed end terrace house on the right. When I started with the GPO as an apprentice, I used to visit Rossett manual exchange a two position CBS2 exchange in the front bedroom of
No 3 Sunny Villas at Rossett between Chester and Wrexham. Note the manhole in the pavement is still there! The exchange was originally a National Telephone Company one opened in June1907 . The folk who lived in the house worked it at night and two operators came from Wrexham auto-manual exchange to work it during the day. Then I worked during my time as an apprentice on construction of the UAX13 which replaced the CBS2. Then in the early 1970's I returned to commission the TXE2 which replaced the UAX13. Then I was off on a 6 months course before going as senior commissioning engineer at Birmingham 'Rectory' – first TXE4.
Then twenty years later I was offered a complete TXE2 by BT at Llangollen which had just gone 'digital' - they weren't aware that I had commissioned that one as well.!
Some years later I recovered a UXE7 (Unit eXchange Electronic No 7) from Cairngorm which was disused as the subs had been moved off it onto Aviemore exchange when it went 'digital'. The UXE7 had replaced
an earlier UAX13
BT only bought 12 UXE7s from GEC around 1981 and all were installed in two groups in the Highland. No more were bought as the UXD5 (modified Monarch sysem came along sooner than expected). The UXE7 was the BT designation for what GEC had developed and sold as the RS22. It was basically a smaller version of the TXE2 which started off with 50 subs, control gear etc in a single rack and could be expaned a unit at a time to several hundred. Racks were only 2 metres high! BT had their own version developed which included a sold state slide-in Coin & Fee Checking circuit card. Also recovered some cards from the last UXE7 in service -
Diabaig - way up on the west coast of Scotland opposite the Isle of Skye. It finished in service on the morning of a day in March 1995 when it was replaced by a 'remote concentrator' working over three microwave links back to Torridon UAX replacing the 10 mile long bare copper wire overhead junction route that morning - last one in the UK! It climbed up to over 600ft over the mountains and had been installed before there was a road to Diabaig. The route up the mountain was that steep that the base of one pole was higher than the top of the previous one!
Happy days over a quarter of a century ago!