Bogallan
Member
- Joined
- 1 Jul 2014
- Messages
- 39
A recent discussion regarding railway communication led me to being reminded of “Omnibus’ telephones on the railway. They were a box on the wall of an office or signalbox with 4? buttons on them and a handset. I remember there were certainly black and red and white? buttons and perhaps, one other colour. From memory, you pressed the black button and rang a morse code signal down the line, say, 2 short, 2 long presses for Thetford box For instance. The trouble was, the signal passed down the telephone wires adjacent to the track and rang in all offices and signalboxes on the circuit, so if you were nosey you could listen in to the conversation being held, and the more people that listened in, the poorer the signal became!
A little funny story to finish on. I started off my railway career in Norwich, i was a relief clerk and was sometimes posted to compile the signalman‘s/crossing keeper‘s rosters. To say I was not very good at it was an understatement, I was dreadful. I did not (and still do not) have a brain “wired’ to compile rosters. After i had gone home, the Norwich Thorpe station supervisor was responsible for ad-hoc rostering and one day, i arrived for work, all bright and breezy and as I passed through the Supervisor’s office, he bellowed my name out, and said “Come here!” “What’s up? said I. “WHAT’S UP? I’ll tell you what’s up - you’ve just delayed “The London” by an hour - you sent 3 crossing keepers to one crossing and none to 2 others!” Oops. Not my finest hour- I didn’t do many more shifts in the roster office after that, luckily for the railway (and me).
I don’t suppose anybody has a picture of the old faithful Omnibus telephone do they?
A little funny story to finish on. I started off my railway career in Norwich, i was a relief clerk and was sometimes posted to compile the signalman‘s/crossing keeper‘s rosters. To say I was not very good at it was an understatement, I was dreadful. I did not (and still do not) have a brain “wired’ to compile rosters. After i had gone home, the Norwich Thorpe station supervisor was responsible for ad-hoc rostering and one day, i arrived for work, all bright and breezy and as I passed through the Supervisor’s office, he bellowed my name out, and said “Come here!” “What’s up? said I. “WHAT’S UP? I’ll tell you what’s up - you’ve just delayed “The London” by an hour - you sent 3 crossing keepers to one crossing and none to 2 others!” Oops. Not my finest hour- I didn’t do many more shifts in the roster office after that, luckily for the railway (and me).
I don’t suppose anybody has a picture of the old faithful Omnibus telephone do they?
