Bare wire phone lines

[Richard_FM]

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.

[davidw]

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!

[Tim]

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!

[pmmunro]

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

[Pellseinydd]

Originally Posted by pmmunro

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

This is one of the early telgraph routes installed in the early 1870's by the Royal Engineers on behalf of the General Post Office when the private telegraph companies were nationalised by the 1869 Telegraph Act and the network extended to remote locations.

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.

[Oldcodger]

Originally Posted by Roger Ramjet

Hi Keith,

Yes OPEN WIRE distribution I remember being taught how to re tension these at the GPO training facility in Glen Parva Barracks, Leicester circa 69 or maybe 70.

At that time there were still a few existing but they were being phased out for the grey plastic coated drop wire.

Ironically one of the fellow trainees complained that the wires to his parents house were constantly having to be re tensioned instead of being swapped out for drop wire which would have sorted the the problem once & for all.

Also very easy to get a tingle via ears [if ringing voltage present] when working at the top of a pole !


Rog

Memories of Muirhouse in the late 60s( happy days), before the yobs lived nearby, 6ft poles, where you stepped out of belt to go for Tea break. I remember ear tingles.
Do you remember the "old " style dropwire clamps ?

[Roger Ramjet]

Originally Posted by Oldcodger

Memories of Muirhouse in the late 60s( happy days), before the yobs lived nearby, 6ft poles, where you stepped out of belt to go for Tea break. I remember ear tingles.
Do you remember the "old " style dropwire clamps ?

Yes I do remember the old drop wire clamps Keith... As a YIT I once got a rollicking for wrapping the wire around the clamp as opposed to wrapping the clamp around the wire. That said the same foreman said he would be happy to have me in his team.

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

[Oldcodger]

Originally Posted by Tim

One does still come across the old grey twin stuff ( dropwire 4 I think)these days. We do try to replace it( on installs) as it is not very good for broadband. Believe it or not there are still a very few open wires from pole to house still remaining. A couple of years ago I went to a fault at a customer off an exchange near Bath, who still had them. He was getting 65Mbps! The fault was internal, and he was happy to leave his wires as they were.

Tim, a few manufactures ( GEC/STC come to mind) produced an old version of 12channel equipment working over open wire routes, which service in thirld world countries over a pair of open wires( high freqs in one direction/low in other). For those transmission types it was self contained. No master Oscillators to generate modulating frequencies. I believe GEC still produced it ( in 62 type format) for export up till circa mid 80s.
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.

[PaulR]

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?

[emeritus]

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.

[smiler411]

Originally Posted by Hartley118

It's fascinating that the '600 ohm impedance' of historical telephone connections still retains such prominence today in an audio world which has never encountered open conductors on porcelain insulators. Some audio engineers still seem to attribute a kind of mystical significance to a 600 ohm analogue audio termination impedance when the typical characteristic impedance of twin-screened audio cable is nearer 100 ohms than 600 ohms.

Of course, with analogue audio, considerations of cable characteristic impedance and termination impedance are generally only relevant for the distances involved in telecoms work in order to avoid audible reflections. I'm therefore intrigued by the apparently seamless transition which happened in the 20th century telecoms industry from open wire 600 ohm circuits to paper insulated (and more recently polythene insulated) twisted pairs. Were termination impedances changed? Were there reflection problems? And, recognising that some terminations were by default just an ordinary telephone, what's a typical phone impedance and was it changed when open wire circuits were discontinued?

Martin

The reference impedance for TBR21 (european standard inc UK) is now a complex impedance reference impedance ZR: A complex impedance made up of 270 ohms in series with a parallel
combination of 750 ohms and 150 nF

[Hartley118]

600 ohms RIP.

Martin

[Nickthedentist]

I recently saw a 1960s semi with dual porcelain insulators as if it had bare wire phone service at one point. Looked very incongruous

[Pellseinydd]

Originally Posted by Nickthedentist

I recently saw a 1960s semi with dual porcelain insulators as if it had bare wire phone service at one point. Looked very incongruous

I've seen insulators these today! They go back to National TelCo days.

[Graham G3ZVT]

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?

[Graham G3ZVT]

The old and the new.

[Valvepower]

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

Originally Posted by DrStrangelove

I remember those around here.

I seem to recall that they were loading coils.

[russell_w_b]

Originally Posted by Roger Ramjet

Sure I recall that in certain locations, the open wires had what looked like cork bottle stoppers fitted at regular intervals - presumably to protect large birds from flying in into same.

Pretty sure you're correct, Roger. The telephone poles around Workington in the vicinity of pigeon lofts had wires fitted with them.

[Pellseinydd]

Originally Posted by Valvepower

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

Certainly weren't 'loading coils' - loading coils were large 'box' shaped units mounted on the pole into which the overhead cables from either direction were fed.

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!

[CambridgeWorks]

Plus the small wooden stepladder you had from me?
Best wishes,
Rob