Day 1

Not off to the best of starts. My mum had a set of keys cut so I could access the shed. Erm, not quite. She cut the wrong set ( its for her work office !) and after suffering thru traffic for over an hour to get across town, and in 30 plus degrees and stifling humidity, I was not amused....

But after much cursing, I got myself up and over the 8ft fences (still got a little athletic ability left!) and got one of the gates unlocked.

Not knowing where to start, I thought best to have a look at the area that seemed to have a lot of electrics in it. Suffice to say that after moving a few empty boxes I started uncovering some fascinating and pretty amazing stuff...

This pic is of a set of plug points for a telephone exchange - Im guessing probably 1950's, but the condition is absolute mint - the paper they are on is the original paper it came in - hasn't been opened since then...there are many packs like this

Following the same theme, this is a patch bay of some sort from said telephone exchanges. Again, this was wrapped and in excellent condition save for a few bent points at the end. And there are plenty of these too....

I thought originally that these were something to do with phone switching but on closer inspection you can see that there is a stamped A.M. and the numbers 21F/373 underneath. Not 100% on what this is but my guess is Australian Military and the 21F is 21F Squadron from Point Cook in WWII.  These switches were made by Wormald in Australia for Graviner from the UK and are known as Flame Switches. I cant find out any more but I think they are to prevent fire in aircraft engines....any help??  So far I have found about 20...most are still in boxes.

*****Update - thanks to a reader who emailed me about this - the A.M actually refers to British Air Ministry and the 21F/373 is the model number.

Western Electric was one of the major phone co's in the USA. So what on earth is this box??  Its pretty beautiful though and quite heavy. Again it may be part of an old network or office system from long ago

This is the last known part for Day 1. There are a few of these parts. They also had A.M. stamped on them. This is the first time the box had ever been opened - the other one is still sealed. The explanation on it is pretty self -explanatory.

So for a couple of hours of potting around - and the light in there is minimal - Im happy with what Ive found....read on to the next post of "Can You Identify This?"