ASSOCIATED ITEMS & EQUIPMENT

  • ASSOCIATED ITEMS AND EQUIPMENT

    Any telephone system needs more than just telephones and exchanges, and the museum has displays of :-
  • Lead and plastic underground cables some dating back to the telegraph days of the late 1800's
  • Optical fibre cables and samples.
  • Selection of cast iron warning notices for telephone poles.
  • An exchange master clock with a working slave clock.
  • Various coin collecting boxes as used in Kiosks, hotels, hospitals, etc Many period photos of Edwardian and later switchboards with operators.
  • A vast library of professional papers and journals dating back to the 1920's belonging to the Telecommunications Heritage group ( THG )
  • Many diagrams of exchange equipment
  • The THG library of diagrams for telephones, ( 'N' diagrams)
  • Engineering and Technical Instructions.
  • Displays of porcelain insulators, fuses and Leclanche cells.
  • KIOSKS
    None on display as yet but two red BT Kiosks and one Mercury (very rare ) kiosk awaiting restoration.
POST OFFICE TELEPHONE VAN (1952)

From 1930's to 1963 the small green vans of POST OFFICE TELEPHONES were a familiar sight in town and country. Telephone engineers drove them as they went about installing and maintaining telephones in homes, offices and factories. The ladder rack on top carried the extension ladder used to reach the overhead wires.
Morris Motors made most of these at Cowley, Oxford and the design followed the passenger car
development. During the 1939-45 war very few were made and this resulted in most of the older ones being rebuilt, often more than once, at a large workshop at Yeading, Middx..
In the late 1940's and early 1950's the 'Z' type, a pre-war design based on the famous Morris 'E' type car
continued to be built until 1953 when the Morris Minor came on the scene.

A few of the 12,623 'POST OFFICE TELEPHONES' Morris 'Z' Type vans have been preserved and one of the last batch produced, MYF 344, was acquired by the Museum. It saw service in the Lincoln Telephone Area from 1953-1962 when it was sold off and used as a television repair mans van for a year. In 1963 it was bought by Mr.Skeels of Lincoln and stored in a disused Baptist Chapel in Boston, Lincs. together with other vehicles and artefacts.

Van 'as found'

'Dug out' after 4 hours from other vehicles, timber and other stored items.

Through contacts at BT Museum, the trustees heard about it and set off to Boston with a car transporter.
It took over four hours to 'dig it out', but it was found to be in restorable order. The engine turned over by hand although the battery was flat! Some water was found in the radiator, indicating that it had not suffered frost damage. It was purchased by The Telecommunications Trust for £1000 with financial help from The Telecommunications Heritage Group. With some difficulty it was loaded on to the trailer and brought back to Milton Keynes.
On examination, the team decided on a complete rebuild. Ther was a little body corrosion and this was dealt with. The engine seemed to be in working order so very little work was needed.

Prolonged attemps were made to get an acceptable finish on the bodywork and it was finally decided to get it professionally resprayed.

Restoration continues when commitments to the telephone collection permit. It is planned to complete the restoration by Sept.2001.