Red phones

[hellocontrol]

Now I suspect RT will be the one answering this but if anyone else knows feel free. Some years ago in control rooms and signal cabins these red phones were put in although there were already lines in. What was the purpose, did they just provide an additional line or was there a specific purpose.

[railtechnician]

Sept 3, 2015 17:34:09 GMT hellocontrol said:

Now I suspect RT will be the one answering this but if anyone else knows feel free. Some years ago in control rooms and signal cabins these red phones were put in although there were already lines in. What was the purpose, did they just provide an additional line or was there a specific purpose.

There was nothing special about red phones that I am aware of. That said ISTR that one or two of the Control Room T/T panels had red 700 type telephones rather than the later grey pendant handsets i.e. Baker Street Central line had one at one time.

There was a period in the late 1980s when a lot of red phones appeared, in some cases the idea was to mitigate theft. Office staff in particular were terrible for taking their phones with them when they moved offices in the never ending round of refurbishment and relocation through the 1980s and 1990s. We always provided new telephone cabling and telephones as offices were refurbished so many of those phones taken away by office staff along with the contents of their desks simply vanished.

Before MD110 replaced Strowger we had to convert literally hundreds of locations and most got LD Statesman telephones in stone with enclosed captive line jack units. Once the MD110 was in service the DTMF Statesman phones and open LJUs soon found there way around the job, these were cream. When several WOS floors were refurbished at Broadway we fitted new blue Statesman phones, the first on the job as I recall which meant they were easily missed. Later at some sites such as Liverpool Street I fitted green Statesman phones during the Broadgate development. South Western Bell facility phones began to appear to replace the expensive cream KT3's which had been used in boss/secretary setups and control rooms, quite simply they were cheaper and their el cheapo basic models also found their way under the Central Line Project and some station refurbs. In the nooks and crannies of the job such as telephone kiosks, seldom used rooms etc very very cheap basic Audioline phones were fitted. The red phones appeared in the latter half of the 1990s, these being BT models with loudspeaking facility which were very handy and found their way into IMRs making it easier for a lineman alone to cope while localising equipment room faults. Naturally over time the various models found their way around the job and no doubt continue to do so. I lost track of how many different types of weatherproof phone we had around the job, PO type 745, Racal, Redatron, Commander, Le Las, NEIDAC, AutelDAC as well as various generations of desk phones in weatherproof enclosures. I recall that Northfields even had a trimphone in the old Cabin CER, the only one that I ever saw in use on the railway.
Some of the variation in phones was down to choice by those footing the bill (with installation labour costs at one time being charged at £200 per hour per man I don't think Operating Managers were too concerned at forking out an extra £10 or £15 for a better model of phone), sometimes by those doing the design & procurement according to various standards and later by contractors once all the installation work had been outsourced. During station refurbishments the architects sometimes inadvertently dictated the phones to be installed on platforms by designing cubby holes and enclosures without seeking consultation with the comms department

[hellocontrol]

RT I can remember some people changing the type of phone they had due to the cost of the model. The red phones I must admit I never saw any in the offices, I can remember the ones put in signal cabins and control rooms and that was a while ago but someone showed me some photos which made me think of them.

[hellocontrol]

I should have added that the phones were not fixed as such and I have just been shown a photo of an IMR an there was a red phone fixed to the wall so I am confused even more.

[railtechnician]

Sept 4, 2015 18:16:00 GMT hellocontrol said:

I should have added that the phones were not fixed as such and I have just been shown a photo of an IMR an there was a red phone fixed to the wall so I am confused even more.

You may recall that back in the day the main means of communication in an IMR were the auto telephone, possibly a local magneto line and the magneto line to the regulator at the control room or associated signal box. It was often quite difficult to fault signalling under failure conditions especially when the AET / lineman was alone so the regulator magneto circuit was more a two way intercom than a traditional magneto line. In the IMR instead of a telephone there would be a vandal proof microphone on a long trailing lead usually found dangling at the programme machine suite such that the AET could reach almost every rack and bay in the room and still have the microphone at hand. Reception was via multiple admiralty / ship type heavy duty loudspeakers mounted above the relay racks. I never saw this system work in all my years in the job although I maintained the lines and the control room end of the equipment for the District and Picc at Earls Court for about 10 years all tolled. Locally the signal maintenance staff usually adapted the IMR auto line to have extension wiring with multiple telephone jacks mounted around the racks such that the auto could be moved around. In strowger days this was done with jacks 95A (ivory or elephant grey) and the phone cord was changed for one with a plug 420 (PO headset type) on the end. Of course this was also done for the magneto line in some equipment rooms. When I joined the PIcc as the line comms TO in the mid 1990s my first job was to visit every Picc Line Engineering maintained IMR and fit auto extension wiring and Line Jack Units where no such system existed or where it was defunct. The magneto equipment simply didn't work very well or at all mostly because the lines were in old leaky cables at trackside and because the regulator desk panels at Earls Court were in a very bad state having had years of both heavy use and sometimes heavy abuse too with broken keys and spilt coffee all over the contacts and wiring. Indeed in the eartly 1990s I had entirely replaced both desk 3A and 3B panels and done some maintenance corrective works on the other desks including the District and Picc controllers telephone panels.
Acton Town was a good example of a site with a local magneto line, in that case connecting east and west IMRs, the facility was lost when the new red auto phones were installed (the pillar in the east IMR was an ideal place to fix the red auto but it meant removing the old and collectable Ericsson wall magneto!) and the contractor removed the local magneto phones in each IMR in the early noughties IIRC. Red phones were fitted down the line at the time but only in the Picc IMRS AFAIR. I believe red may have been chosen to highlight the importance of the IMR auto and dissuade people from borrowing either the phone or parts thereof as frequently happened in rooms which were not officially visited on a daily basis but that is an assumption on my part. Various miscellaneous projects caused additional auto lines and standard phones of various sorts to appear in IMRs specifically for test purposes such that the work involving the need to test using the auto would not impede signal maintenance staff when going about their maintenance or call work. Most such lines were short lived and active only for the duration of the project but the phones tended to be forgotten and were left in the rooms often to disappear in whole or in part sometime later to keep working phones in service when they went faulty.

In IMRs one always wanted an auto as close to the lever frame as possible for joint testing with the signalman / regulator under maintenance or signal failure conditions. Often phones were mounted on the frame at one end just below eye level or on an adjacent wall if possible because a phone sat in front of the levers always seemed to get in the way. That said many of the IMRs that I worked in had table top phones which with the bookwiring, timetable and other items would simply add to the clutter obscuring the levers!!! So don't get hung up on wallphones !!!

[GentlemanJim]

Ah yes, the RED phone....... found in Signal Cabins and Station Control Rooms, usually a direct line to the Line Controller. Otherwise known as the 'Bat Phone' or 'God Phone' I've seen many a person quiver in fear when it rang. My Missus worked at Liverpool St. and new it was me calling her,she would answer 'hello darling' much to the horror of those in her company in the Control Room.

[hellocontrol]

Sept 5, 2015 10:15:09 GMT railtechnician said:

Sept 4, 2015 18:16:00 GMT hellocontrol said:

I should have added that the phones were not fixed as such and I have just been shown a photo of an IMR an there was a red phone fixed to the wall so I am confused even more.

You may recall that back in the day the main means of communication in an IMR were the auto telephone, possibly a local magneto line and the magneto line to the regulator at the control room or associated signal box. It was often quite difficult to fault signalling under failure conditions especially when the AET / lineman was alone so the regulator magneto circuit was more a two way intercom than a traditional magneto line. In the IMR instead of a telephone there would be a vandal proof microphone on a long trailing lead usually found dangling at the programme machine suite such that the AET could reach almost every rack and bay in the room and still have the microphone at hand. Reception was via multiple admiralty / ship type heavy duty loudspeakers mounted above the relay racks. I never saw this system work in all my years in the job although I maintained the lines and the control room end of the equipment for the District and Picc at Earls Court for about 10 years all tolled. Locally the signal maintenance staff usually adapted the IMR auto line to have extension wiring with multiple telephone jacks mounted around the racks such that the auto could be moved around. In strowger days this was done with jacks 95A (ivory or elephant grey) and the phone cord was changed for one with a plug 420 (PO headset type) on the end. Of course this was also done for the magneto line in some equipment rooms. When I joined the PIcc as the line comms TO in the mid 1990s my first job was to visit every Picc Line Engineering maintained IMR and fit auto extension wiring and Line Jack Units where no such system existed or where it was defunct. The magneto equipment simply didn't work very well or at all mostly because the lines were in old leaky cables at trackside and because the regulator desk panels at Earls Court were in a very bad state having had years of both heavy use and sometimes heavy abuse too with broken keys and spilt coffee all over the contacts and wiring. Indeed in the eartly 1990s I had entirely replaced both desk 3A and 3B panels and done some maintenance corrective works on the other desks including the District and Picc controllers telephone panels.
Acton Town was a good example of a site with a local magneto line, in that case connecting east and west IMRs, the facility was lost when the new red auto phones were installed (the pillar in the east IMR was an ideal place to fix the red auto but it meant removing the old and collectable Ericsson wall magneto!) and the contractor removed the local magneto phones in each IMR in the early noughties IIRC. Red phones were fitted down the line at the time but only in the Picc IMRS AFAIR. I believe red may have been chosen to highlight the importance of the IMR auto and dissuade people from borrowing either the phone or parts thereof as frequently happened in rooms which were not officially visited on a daily basis but that is an assumption on my part. Various miscellaneous projects caused additional auto lines and standard phones of various sorts to appear in IMRs specifically for test purposes such that the work involving the need to test using the auto would not impede signal maintenance staff when going about their maintenance or call work. Most such lines were short lived and active only for the duration of the project but the phones tended to be forgotten and were left in the rooms often to disappear in whole or in part sometime later to keep working phones in service when they went faulty.

In IMRs one always wanted an auto as close to the lever frame as possible for joint testing with the signalman / regulator under maintenance or signal failure conditions. Often phones were mounted on the frame at one end just below eye level or on an adjacent wall if possible because a phone sat in front of the levers always seemed to get in the way. That said many of the IMRs that I worked in had table top phones which with the bookwiring, timetable and other items would simply add to the clutter obscuring the levers!!! So don't get hung up on wallphones !!!

I have to admit re the speaker system in IMRs never knew it to work. Most V frames like you say had a phone on a long lead right in front of the levers.
The red phones yes I don't ever remember seeing one in a IMR other than those which had the Picc line, not a dodgy deal by someone with some phones to shift but a different policy.

[hellocontrol]

Sept 5, 2015 11:29:50 GMT GentlemanJim said:

Ah yes, the RED phone....... found in Signal Cabins and Station Control Rooms, usually a direct line to the Line Controller. Otherwise known as the 'Bat Phone' or 'God Phone' I've seen many a person quiver in fear when it rang. My Missus worked at Liverpool St. and new it was me calling her,she would answer 'hello darling' much to the horror of those in her company in the Control Room.

Bat phone I have heard that one and the phone was not always red. Picc cabin I think had the most separate direct phones there is a photo on the web with the signalman holding I think 3 phones.

GJ when was the wife at Liverpool St? I was a SI there some years ago. John Barham was there as well as his wife.

[railtechnician]

Sept 5, 2015 14:26:44 GMT hellocontrol said:

Sept 5, 2015 10:15:09 GMT railtechnician said:

You may recall that back in the day............................trimmed for clarity

I have to admit re the speaker system in IMRs never knew it to work. Most V frames like you say had a phone on a long lead right in front of the levers.
The red phones yes I don't ever remember seeing one in a IMR other than those which had the Picc line, not a dodgy deal by someone with some phones to shift but a different policy.

The Picc line was different !  All lines remaining communications installation and maintenance was handled by the comms sections of Signal, Electrical and Communications based at Acton Works following outsourcing of most installation work and large chunks of maintenance work to several external contractors, Siemens, Westinghouse Cubic Ltd (subsequently rebranded as Cubic Transportation Systems) and a number of other smaller contractors such as Ford Electronics. Devolution of engineering to lines did not involve communications and SE&C retained multiple trading agreements with all lines for the work that had not been outsourced.
On the Picc line the PLE Signal Manager decided to do his own comms maintenance as far as was possible in order to reduce the comms maintenance budget which as all line signal managers knew was rather expensive as a result of SE&C Comms Engineering Manager having to hike the labour costs in order to remain a viable business unit (a tin of worms too complex to discuss here but due IMHO in no small part to Tory government interference i.e. the deliberate decision to force all LU engineering to undertake 'make' or 'buy' reviews in the late 1980s as a prelude to possible LUL privatisation followed by the Labour government decision to opt for the expensive PPP and effectively bury the capital taxpayer cost of keeping LUL on government books).

Thus in the summer of 1996 an advert appeared for a night comms TO vacancy on the Picc to be responsible for line comms maintenance, basically taking over all the work that was contracted to SE&C. The duties were the routine maintenance of all telephones-at-signals, all tunnel telephones and all direct telephone lines, T/T failure investigations, faults, repairs, minor installation and removal works, including survey and design work and generally looking after all the comms in the Picc & District control room (it being designated a PIcc maintenance asset. I applied for that vacancy and having been successful transferred to PLE in the autumn. My duties also included staff and management training as and when required to meet the exigencies of the business, the Picc having an above average turnover of signal staff, many being promoted upwards and to other lines.  

The PLE Signal Manager calculated that I was saving him an absolute fortune in maintenance costs, even though I had to rely on line electricians, signal support assistants, point fitters and signal maintenance TOs to act as my assistants for T/T and SPT routine testing and myriad other tasks which sometimes made it tricky to complete the routine modules within a single shift until I had trained almost everyone in basic comms theory and practice. When I had no comms work I became a signal support technician or an assistant to the electricians, we were a very close knit team and having begun my career on signal new works I asked to be put on the T2S signal lineman course and was passed out as a signal maintenance TO in 1997 becoming a dual grade signal and Comms TO doing anything and everything. Coming from the 'old school' of signal new works it was not difficult for me to 'change hats' or 'wear multiple hats', indeed in my years as a comms chargehand I would often be the van driver, the SPIC, the Protection Master, the Trolley Master, the L&E operator, the storeman and the supervisor although I generally would not 'wear more than four hats' simultaneously.

Of course in the run up to PPP the PLE section became part of the JNP organisation and the Bakerloo and Met signal maintenance sections gave up maintenance of the Jubilee line, indeed the Picc took over signal maintenance from Charing Cross to Stanmore and Met maintenance from Finchley Road to the Preston Road Boundary. As JLE had not maintained the existing SPTs they were in a terrible state of disrepair, sacrilege to me as I had installed most of the TAS systems between Finchley Road and Stanmore in my days with SE&C and had a large input in the two sites that were not my installations. The Jubilee SPTs then became my responsibility for maintenance and I had to beg borrow and steal parts from redundant Met / H&C systems to get them working again, fortunately the Met had been busy upgrading its SPTs and so I was 'given the nod' to recover the necessary equipment from several locations. JLE were going to install new SPTs but apparently ran out of money although they had installed may new phones at trackside albeit connected to nowhere and we were after some initial opposition given permission to use them as replacements for the many unmaintained phones which were rusting away in leaky 'weatherproof' Sarel cases.  

AFAIK the red phones in Picc IMRs were a local Picc Line initiative and I believe they were installed by an external contractor.

I have no idea what the position is today as everything AIUI has seen several staff/management rearrangements since I retired but even after becoming Tube Lines staff the Picc was still maintaining the Comms assets that had not been contracted to external contractors.

[railtechnician]

Sept 5, 2015 11:29:50 GMT GentlemanJim said:

Ah yes, the RED phone....... found in Signal Cabins and Station Control Rooms, usually a direct line to the Line Controller. Otherwise known as the 'Bat Phone' or 'God Phone' I've seen many a person quiver in fear when it rang. My Missus worked at Liverpool St. and new it was me calling her,she would answer 'hello darling' much to the horror of those in her company in the Control Room.

I installed the temporary ticket hall 'X' ops room in Liverpool St (when Ralph England was there) during the Broadgate development and we had no bat phone then, however, in those days many such rooms had Protowire panels and cabins had desk panels with the controller direct lines.

The new Liverpool Street ops room was installed by external contactors but I surveyed it as part of the Crossrail enabling works survey back in early 1996. I don't recall a red phone but it probably was there, somewhere I suspect that I still have among my personal notes the sketches I made of the room at the time detailing all that it contained as part of my report. My recollection is that John Barham and his missus were there at or about that time although I am not 100% on that as I did so much work at Liverpool Street throughout three decades in almost every part of the station which still had wooden platforms on the Met when I first worked there in 1977/8. 

[GentlemanJim]

She was there from 97-04 her surname was Meloni.

[hellocontrol]

Having checked I left Liverpool St in 1989 so long gone. Time fly's when your having fun.

[hellocontrol]

Sept 5, 2015 17:42:37 GMT railtechnician said:

Sept 5, 2015 14:26:44 GMT hellocontrol said:

I have to admit re the speaker system in IMRs never knew it to work. Most V frames like you say had a phone on a long lead right in front of the levers.
The red phones yes I don't ever remember seeing one in a IMR other than those which had the Picc line, not a dodgy deal by someone with some phones to shift but a different policy.

The Picc line was different !  All lines remaining communications installation and maintenance was handled by the comms sections of Signal, Electrical and Communications based at Acton Works following outsourcing of most installation work and large chunks of maintenance work to several external contractors, Siemens, Westinghouse Cubic Ltd (subsequently rebranded as Cubic Transportation Systems) and a number of other smaller contractors such as Ford Electronics. Devolution of engineering to lines did not involve communications and SE&C retained multiple trading agreements with all lines for the work that had not been outsourced.
On the Picc line the PLE Signal Manager decided to do his own comms maintenance as far as was possible in order to reduce the comms maintenance budget which as all line signal managers knew was rather expensive as a result of SE&C Comms Engineering Manager having to hike the labour costs in order to remain a viable business unit (a tin of worms too complex to discuss here but due IMHO in no small part to Tory government interference i.e. the deliberate decision to force all LU engineering to undertake 'make' or 'buy' reviews in the late 1980s as a prelude to possible LUL privatisation followed by the Labour government decision to opt for the expensive PPP and effectively bury the capital taxpayer cost of keeping LUL on government books).

Thus in the summer of 1996 an advert appeared for a night comms TO vacancy on the Picc to be responsible for line comms maintenance, basically taking over all the work that was contracted to SE&C. The duties were the routine maintenance of all telephones-at-signals, all tunnel telephones and all direct telephone lines, T/T failure investigations, faults, repairs, minor installation and removal works, including survey and design work and generally looking after all the comms in the Picc & District control room (it being designated a PIcc maintenance asset. I applied for that vacancy and having been successful transferred to PLE in the autumn. My duties also included staff and management training as and when required to meet the exigencies of the business, the Picc having an above average turnover of signal staff, many being promoted upwards and to other lines.  

The PLE Signal Manager calculated that I was saving him an absolute fortune in maintenance costs, even though I had to rely on line electricians, signal support assistants, point fitters and signal maintenance TOs to act as my assistants for T/T and SPT routine testing and myriad other tasks which sometimes made it tricky to complete the routine modules within a single shift until I had trained almost everyone in basic comms theory and practice. When I had no comms work I became a signal support technician or an assistant to the electricians, we were a very close knit team and having begun my career on signal new works I asked to be put on the T2S signal lineman course and was passed out as a signal maintenance TO in 1997 becoming a dual grade signal and Comms TO doing anything and everything. Coming from the 'old school' of signal new works it was not difficult for me to 'change hats' or 'wear multiple hats', indeed in my years as a comms chargehand I would often be the van driver, the SPIC, the Protection Master, the Trolley Master, the L&E operator, the storeman and the supervisor although I generally would not 'wear more than four hats' simultaneously.

Of course in the run up to PPP the PLE section became part of the JNP organisation and the Bakerloo and Met signal maintenance sections gave up maintenance of the Jubilee line, indeed the Picc took over signal maintenance from Charing Cross to Stanmore and Met maintenance from Finchley Road to the Preston Road Boundary. As JLE had not maintained the existing SPTs they were in a terrible state of disrepair, sacrilege to me as I had installed most of the TAS systems between Finchley Road and Stanmore in my days with SE&C and had a large input in the two sites that were not my installations. The Jubilee SPTs then became my responsibility for maintenance and I had to beg borrow and steal parts from redundant Met / H&C systems to get them working again, fortunately the Met had been busy upgrading its SPTs and so I was 'given the nod' to recover the necessary equipment from several locations. JLE were going to install new SPTs but apparently ran out of money although they had installed may new phones at trackside albeit connected to nowhere and we were after some initial opposition given permission to use them as replacements for the many unmaintained phones which were rusting away in leaky 'weatherproof' Sarel cases.  

AFAIK the red phones in Picc IMRs were a local Picc Line initiative and I believe they were installed by an external contractor.

I have no idea what the position is today as everything AIUI has seen several staff/management rearrangements since I retired but even after becoming Tube Lines staff the Picc was still maintaining the Comms assets that had not been contracted to external contractors.

I think that Picc line were far more ahead of the game in some respects, where I worked all the staff from the comms call centre came in with us. When it came to the PPP Tubelines were ahead of Metronet in quite a number of areas. I once said to my boss about sending me on the T2S course and they asked what would they get from me doing it, I said nothing but I would be qualified and would have all that time away.

[hellocontrol]

Sept 5, 2015 17:54:48 GMT railtechnician said:

Sept 5, 2015 11:29:50 GMT GentlemanJim said:

Ah yes, the RED phone....... found in Signal Cabins and Station Control Rooms, usually a direct line to the Line Controller. Otherwise known as the 'Bat Phone' or 'God Phone' I've seen many a person quiver in fear when it rang. My Missus worked at Liverpool St. and new it was me calling her,she would answer 'hello darling' much to the horror of those in her company in the Control Room.

I installed the temporary ticket hall 'X' ops room in Liverpool St (when Ralph England was there) during the Broadgate development and we had no bat phone then, however, in those days many such rooms had Protowire panels and cabins had desk panels with the controller direct lines.

The new Liverpool Street ops room was installed by external contactors but I surveyed it as part of the Crossrail enabling works survey back in early 1996. I don't recall a red phone but it probably was there, somewhere I suspect that I still have among my personal notes the sketches I made of the room at the time detailing all that it contained as part of my report. My recollection is that John Barham and his missus were there at or about that time although I am not 100% on that as I did so much work at Liverpool Street throughout three decades in almost every part of the station which still had wooden platforms on the Met when I first worked there in 1977/8. 

RT I am sure in another post I mentioned that we must have met as I was working at Liverpool St when they commissioned the flood alarms for the Docklands railway, I was given the numbers that were used to test the system so when I knew there was someone on who had done me a bad turn I would ring the one of numbers, I had lots of fun. John Barham was a bad relief he lived at Milton Keynes and used every excuse you could think of. He came out as a DTM and his wife moved to Paddington. 
Ralph England now there is a name.

[railtechnician]

Sept 6, 2015 11:47:04 GMT hellocontrol said:

Sept 5, 2015 17:42:37 GMT railtechnician said:

I think that Picc line were far more ahead of the game in some respects, where I worked all the staff from the comms call centre came in with us. When it came to the PPP Tubelines were ahead of Metronet in quite a number of areas. I once said to my boss about sending me on the T2S course and they asked what would they get from me doing it, I said nothing but I would be qualified and would have all that time away.

The Picc Line Engineering department that I joined in 1996 was IMHO the best organised and operated of any line. Our signal manager was tough and held us all to the highest standards. We were well integrated with the operating department at Ash House and Bollo House and our P-Way counterparts at Maxwell House (Ealing Common). We had good relationships with station staff, line controllers and regulators and were very much a can-do operation, no matter what the task. We often worked beyond or outside our remit to keep the railway operational. JNP of course only had two engineering organisations until just after I retired, until then (2005) Jubilee line engineering was shared between Picc (Charing X-Stanmore) and Northern (JLE) line engineering. 
To gain our IRSE signalling tester licenses we were given much tougher examinations than any of the staff on the other lines and we were versatile, i.e. we were encouraged to learn each others trades ansd with the many and varied backgrounds of the TOs in the Picc depots we were a dependable multidisciplined workforce.

Of course I am biassed but nobody in the organisation was too high up to get his hands dirty including the signal manager himself who began his career as an LT electrician. We also worked closely with the District line and most of us had mingled in various other roles and departments over the years, indeed the District line signal manager at the time was a former colleague of mine from Whitechapel signal new works, we had been wireman there together but had taken different career paths, he through signal maintenance and me through comms installation. LUL was always a pretty small world in personnel terms but as the years rolled on through the decades it just seemed to get even smaller !