Speaker Phone Panel

[starcross]

Earlier this year I acquired a speaker phone panel from eBay. It cost a small fortune to ship across the pond to Canada but it was worth it. These panels were widely used in the various regional Police Boxes as well as in the more well known Glasgow and Edinburgh Boxes. This particular example came from Portsmouth, specifically the brick Police Box on the Southwest corner of Havant Road and Eastern Road. (It still exists even now, although the ivy has taken it over)





The chap I bought it from Rodney Marshall (who took all the photographs), removed it himself with permission of the Hampshire Constabulary on April 5 1989. He provided me the original letter of permission including the signatures he obtained at each step of the removal process. Apparently he was told to make good on the damage to the door because the no one had the keys anymore. They also made sure to select the date of removal so as to avoid embarrassment from passersby assuming the worst.




Streetview

I did some research on the police box in Portsmouth and found it on an OS map in 1951. It seems to have been installed when Eastern road was constructed some time after 1932. I haven't been able to locate records on the road construction but it is a good lead to look into.

PCB - 1951
No message is associated with this attachment. 1951 Area
1932 Area

Rodney had this to say about my findings about the box.
"Portsmouth was originally very important military wise and the left over from this were vast areas of Portsea Island not built on especially down the eastern side with the railway forming a natural line.  With the vast growth in car ownership after the Great War people started traveling to the seaside and Portsmouth became a bottleneck in the summer with people trying to get down to the beaches at Southsea and onto ferries for the Isle of Wight and the new airfield since closed and built on (By the way Portsmouth is on Portsea Island and Southsea was the area of Portsmouth along the seafront.  Portsmouth now covers all of the island and spreads into the mainland).  So there was the need to build the Eastern Road starting at the original coast road running through Havant and that is where the police post was built for traffic control. Evidence of this is the only other item I found in the police box being a painted direction sign in Southern Railway style because the Isle of Wight Ferry was run by the railway."

[hb88banzai]

Very cool bit of history.

About how much does the panel weigh?

[Senseidale]

Very nice what did you pay for it ?
Dale

[starcross]

Very nice what did you pay for it ?

It was £150 in the ebay auction but I payed nearly £200 to have it collected and shipped to Canada, I'm certain I got hit with customs charges as well. In the end the number I feel comfortable remembering was $600 Canadian. Which is still more or less the same thing in American dollars with maybe a few pennies to the dollar difference. 

About how much does the panel weigh?

It was about 25kg but after we had it all wrapped up for shipping it ended up being 27.5kg and you have to pay for volumetric weight of 28kg because of the dimensions of the box. I had the seller wrap it up flat so I could get a better shipping deal, luckily the brackets actually came off. I sent the picture of the unit to a shipping companies and got some quotes, it was fairly easy.

I had the Shipping company double box the unit because I knew they would never pack it as tight as I wanted. They used two boxes but packing peanuts all around. There was at least one tear in the box where a corner hit the end of the box. However all that said there was no damage except some of the paint fell off from all the vibrations and some of the packing tape.



The first thing I did to it was give it a good bath. The whole panel reeked of grease and old oil, which is good because it kept everything loose, but not so great indoors. So I washed it down, and then I tried to remove all the screws and get everything washed again when it was separated. I greased all the screw holes with a synthetic grease so it doesn't reek but still easy to turn everything. Once I got it back together, I didn't get a chance to touch it again until later in the Autumn.

[starcross]

I have this delusion that I can restore the panel to mostly original condition at least externally. I'd love to do it internally but I don't think I could make it work all that well, and I don't have a landline any way. It could make a nifty mobile phone dock and interface though.

So I started Researching the panels and what would be involved trying to restore the unit to proper appearance. Luckily further conversations with Rodney Marshall yielded all sorts of additional information and details. He gave me the original installation drawing for this sort of Panel.

Flickr - Larger



From the installation drawing and the visual evidence there are four brackets and a cover that makes up the complete unit.

1) Base bracket (owned)
2) Light Bracket (owned)
3) Jack-in Unit (Missing)
3) Outer cover (Missing)

So right off I have enough information to re-create the Cover. This is because both the top of the cover and the bottom rest of the Base Bracket and the Light bracket. In fact there are small holding pegs where the cover used to be held on the two brackets. when the brackets are on the unit it should be easy enough to get the total height of the cover. The shape follows the outside of the base bracket so it is just a matter of working out the pattern and getting a piece of sheet metal bent to the appropriate size.

But if that isn't enough there are some photos of the actual unit to assist. The Left view comes from Rodney, and the Right view from britishtelephones.com both together shows a complete picture of this cover from both sides.



I have a spare GPO 200 Series Handset laying around, I even found a modern antique looking Light bulb which would allow me to complete the exterior Restoration.

[starcross]

With the Exterior research fairly straight forward the internal research is a bit trickier. The Jack-in unit is a rare item in the 21st century. My friend Rodney has given me photographs he took of a surviving unit in the Avoncroft Museum's PA1 Pillar. Rodney has also said that there is a private collector who has a unit, but the collector is a very private person; even so I said I'd love to get in contact with them if possible. Still we have the Avoncroft photos to assist with the research. (I'll likely expand on this in the PA1 Pillar Plans thread at a later date.)

There are two parts of the Jack-in unit that are required.
1) The Holding bracket
2) The Electronics plate

The holding bracket is fairly straight forward, it screws into the base Bracket and has a slider for the Electronics plate. It has a nice electrical connection box that has blades which cuts the connections to the Electronics plate when it slides out to be serviced.

This is an example of the Holding Bracket in the Glasgow Wilson Street Box in 2010.



This is a clearer set of photos from the PA1 Pillar in Avoncroft from Rodney.



Sadly Rodney didn't take any measurements for either plate or bracket when the museum staff gave him access to the unit. He did give me the height of the phone plate though.

Still we can see that the basic shape is the same no matter if it is for the Pillar or a Box. The pillar has the same mounting posts cast into it as the Base Bracket does on the Panel. Its safe to say that the Electronics Plate is likely the same shape as the Avoncroft Unit, likely because it was for the triangular casting on the Pillar.

The Electronics Plate is much more complicated, I plan to cover it more in depth in the PA1 Pillar Plans thread. However looking down at the plate we can see the basic shape.



The phone plate is what you would see through the cover, everything else is hidden away. The phone plate is a separate piece that is screwed to the electronics plate. Likely the phone plate was painted black while the cover is painted that Light Green color industrial things tended to get painted. You can see the contrast in the photo of the left side of the cover.



Should I ever get to restore the interior components I would likely stop at the phone plate. I could try to make a speaker phone out of it, but a more utility restoration would be to make the handset compatible with my mobile phone and use the restored unit that way.