Railway Telephone Systems

Thanks to our colleague Mike , we get a little historical perspective on railway telephony and the Strowger and GWR/Western Region omnibus circuits.
Filmed at the Kidderminster Railway Museum whose collection includes an ex BR strowger exchange plus a number of beautifully preserved telephone instruments, Mike takes us through their inner workings and some
Technical background from his many years of experience in the Railway telephone industry

[@bryanwoodward1822]

Nostalgic ... 54 yrs ago I started work as a Technician in the NZPO Telephone exchanges which used that system, cleaned the banks and changed worn out wipers. Adjusted relay springs etc..

[@davidquirk8097]

Fascinating. I love to hear this, not so old, history. Thank you to you and Mr Tyrel.

[@steveradford5460]

Great to see Mike again with an interesting account of railway telecoms history. Also, refreshing my memories of Strowger operation and relay functions. I somehow doubt function of modern electronic exchanges will be recalled with such detail in another 50 years.

[@irseminorrailwayssection9491]

@@steveradford5460 probably very true. And will the software still be available, it may and be buried in someone’s loft somewhere 🤗

[@RalphFreeman-ok5of]

I worked a chap who could listen to a Strowger frame and tell you the number that had been dialled from the chatter of the selectors.

[@markhansford178]

Fantastic. I left school in 1979 to be an apprentice with Post Office Telecommunications, a real public service where customer service was key. No expense spared training courses and endless support from those around you. Good days, all now sadly gone in favour of profit from a company that really doesn't have a clue about looking after its customers.
You can't beat sitting in a busy Strowger exchange with the switches chattering away behind you, and the slight whiff of oil/old cabling/dust whatever it is (probably Geoff Parsons (RIP) with his never ending fag in his mouth 😆) but there's a certain smell that goes with an exchange like this that I remember well.... Great video, thank you for sharing it.

[@irseminorrailwayssection9491]

@@markhansford178 more than welcome sir,stories and memories are always welcomed as important bits of our heritage as much as the actual physical items themselves ☺️

[@richardleney9932]

nice to see some old Strowger there (in the thumbnail picture).
Strowger was being phased out of BT when I joined in '88 as an apprentice.
now in 2024 , we are phasing out the PSTN.so my job comes to an end. currently applying for Railway Signalling in ELY (cambs)

[@irseminorrailwayssection9491]

I know the feeling, luckily our colleague Mike ran me through a taster of how it all works which is the video you’ve got the thumbnail from, I never really got into that side of it being more the S side than the T side and yet we did have two STROWGER driven train describer setups with the relay sets rather than the selectors, those were at cheadle hulme and at romiley, the latter becoming spare parts after removal for some of the P.O type relays in our old STROWGER exchange up at Rowsley.
Good luck with the job move.

[@johnkeepin7527]

Interesting presentation. There is a similar arrangement at Norchard station on the Dean Forest Railway in their museum.
Although this item is about “telephone systems”, historically there was a lot of use of the same equipment for some signalling systems as well. Notably, the old BR Western Region panel signal boxes used a lot of the PO3000 series 50V relays for the (non-vital) part of the interlocking system, and until the mid 1980s a derivative of the Strowger exchange mechanism was also used for train describer systems. I had a lot to do with it from 1981 on, originally on the Western until it was all re-organised.

[@irseminorrailwayssection9491]

@@johnkeepin7527 indeed, we visited that exchange on one of our visits , I recall the train describers t Cheadle Hulme and Romiley being strowger based and the inductions t Greenbank being post office type

[@pauldonnelly5055]

Difficult to follow vocals with back ground intrusion but a priceless account of clever engineering at work.

[@irseminorrailwayssection9491]

@@pauldonnelly5055 yes the museum was open and a family were enjoying the displays, it was a lucky shot as we were waiting to meet the museums curator and Mike was talking about how it all worked 👍

[@allanegleston4931]

mute the audio and use closed captions . i do that a lot esp with ai voices.

[@irseminorrailwayssection9491]

@ unfortunately I’d loose a lot of the information and to be fair a silent video is not everyone’s cuppa, on that note the AI algorithm is already running the script (as best as it can) in the comments side so folks can get subtitles etcetera as they go .

[@stephenrichards5386]

Exactly the same as public telephone systems and I worked on them all.

[@exeterwestgroup6466]

Shame the selector and other phones weren’t covered in more detail on how they work.

[@iwans8719]

Цікава ретро техніка. У нас в Україні селектори Строуджера (крокошукачі) дожили до початку XXI століття... а ще за 15 років класичний сектор телефонної мережа загального користування скоротився до бізнес-абонентів лише у великих містах.
Мобільний зв'язок витіснив класичний дротовий зв'язок.
Значна частка бізнес-абонентів користується VOIP-телефонією.

[@johndavies4919]

Clear as mud

[@irseminorrailwayssection9491]

@@johndavies4919 it’s all magic 🤫

[@barrieshepherd7694]

I recall reading that 999 was also chosen so that intermittent line breaks/shorts (or kids in phone boxes bashing the cradle rest to get free calls 🤣) would not dial it accidentally - if 111 had been chosen. I think there was also some discussion about it being more reliable to dial in a dark or smoke filled room by locating the finger stop at 0 and putting a finger in the hole above - who knows! 0 had been reserved for Operator so 000 (as in other countries) was not available. Later of course BT moved Operator to 100!

[@Brian3989]

Now 0 is first digit of UK national dialing codes and 00 for international codes.
The original use of 999 was in London, where people were used to seeing numbers like WHIthall 1212 or FLAxman 2020 , dials having letters and numbers on them.

[@barrieshepherd7694]

@@Brian3989 That was why they dropped 0 for Operator to free it for STD/IDD trunk access

[@Brian3989]

@@barrieshepherd7694 They also had to change a few UK dialing codes that started 0o.

[@ericwalton4610]

When I was a littley, in the early 50's, all the directories had details, with a drawing, of how to dial 999 in darkness or in smoke. Probably a throwback to the war years.

[@lukedoherty8062]

@@Brian3989i believe 0 is to dial out of the local exchange

[@allanegleston4931]

klunk and bang tec . but it still works

[@irseminorrailwayssection9491]

@@allanegleston4931 well built as long as it’s treated with some love and careful tweaking it will do well

[@SpoonyMcSpoonface]

I will never understand Strowger etc so will stick to the S side of S&T. If you can’t hit it with a hammer I don’t want to know 😆

[@RalphFreeman-ok5of]

I worked a chap who could listen to a Strowger frame and tell you the number that had been dialled from the chatter of the selectors.