Many people are familiar with old telephones, but not many people think of the telephone exchanges that they worked with. During the dial phone era most telephone exchanges were of the Strowger Type. The old exchanges were all replaced by 1995. I have however saved enough pieces from scrap to build my own exchange.
My exchange has a mixture of pre 2000 and 2000 type selectors. The pre-2000 type selectors (grey coloured) were made from the late twenties until 1936, the 2000 type selectors (light straw coloured) were made from 1936 until about 1979.
My Exchange is currently being re-built to acomodate all the different pieces of equipment that I have collected. The main 2000 series exchange is now working and connected to several phones around the house. I have to finish the Alarm Equipment Rack to enable the exchange to be run safely when un-attended.
The next step after the AER is to connect up the pre-2000 UAX12 selector.
Some bits of my exchange.
Unused pre-2000 mechanism.
A Pre-2000 200 outlet group selector.
A UAX12 selector.
A 100 line pre-2000 final selector.
Subscribers' uni-selectors.
The Ringing machine, this makes all the exchange tones.
One of the equipment racks being constructed.
Wiring up the main selector shelf.
The newly wired main selector shelf being tested.
