Help me identify this thing !

I will be putting up a more detailed post tonight or tomorrow ( I have a lot of uploads going on right now so its taking ages to do anything)

BUT - Would love anyones help on the below item - found in the shed under a ton of rubbish. I believe it to be WWI and looks like it had a canvas top at one point. Its about 1.2m long and 50cm wide. - I think its a transformer of some sort - hope those things at the top are tubes but really cannot tell...there is a side flap near the sprayed on D6 and thats really about all I can tell you. Will keep trying to find markings...

Now this one is fairly self explanatory   - but what does it do exactly????  Its in great looking condition for its age though !

Well here we are at the start of another week. The once in a blue moon hailstorms on the weekend that blasted Melbourne largely passed by the shed - though there is water damage in a few areas. If it had been hit by the lemon sized hail that hit other suburbs I dont think we would have been so lucky.....

Anyway, the auction date has been set, and it means working harder and faster to clear the place out.

Is it really such a big place?  Well heres the latest pics !

So I scrambled up one of the numerous ladders around today and took a shot of the back half of the shed - a lot has gone but there's still loads to go !

Looking over my shoulder at the rows behind me.....what is all that stuff ????????

And down to my right - that door is the roller door for the carport......

This is the phone bits aisle - also now train air brake aisle and various other bits of total randomness... this is where most of the water got in and a number of larger boxes have fallen  = big cleanup ahead....

Looking down the main aisle - there is some space at last !  Moved a load of old rusted bits n bolts off to the scrapyard to be recycled - no point in hanging on to those things.....though I do feel a bit funny about  doing it, given the history etc etc....

Wall that forms part of the carport....

Aisle directly across from last pic, home to many aircraft parts.....

Dont even start me on this - left by other "collectors" and just tossed into the worst pile possible.....but you still find the odd gem !

And to round out this report, have a look at this for some serious phone exchange stuff....

Four of these and they weigh a ton !  I'm curious as to what they are in terms of the exchange. I won't be able to eBay them unless someone is happy to pick up as they are just too heavy...

Actually after a glass of red I feel more energised (poor you, dear reader !) so heres some things I found today

Boring old bolts right? Well, maybe not. The top one is an Ajax Carriage Bolt and the bottom is a group of Nettlefold ConeHead Rivets. The Ajax is Cadmium Plated - and as far as I can tell , and based on its location in the shed, are all for aircraft....

Onto phone items and these appear to be bells - the first two pics are the same unit, while the third pic is a unit with a much heavier handle on top.....any help?

No idea again, but the black enamel is nice on the base......

Lots of people have been asking if I had found any jack points - today I finally found four !  The red one matched the size of the jacks I have been putting up on eBay ( and I also found another 50 odd patchbays from different eras today)

These appear to be older jacks for an exchange - they must almost certainly be copper casings as they are heavier than the more modern ones.....nice looking too!

Yup you guessed it ----- absolutely no idea  !!!!!!  There are fuses, a condenser, nice looking cog, a bell and four buttons on top.....nope, still no closer to solving this one !

OK I promise thats it for now.....By the end of the week I think we will have made a significant impact on clearing to the scrapyards of all the rusted and broken items...

PS - this will make you weep - it certainly made me! My brother ran into a military dealer at a local market on the weekend - he recounted how he had been to the shed a few years back and picked up 100 WWI trench periscopes for $8 each. So thats $800 he paid for them.......they are worth $500 each.......I dont want to even think about that.......!!!!

Till next time !

Special stuff - the Air Raid Shelter

This is a moment that I've been waiting for for all my 39 years on this planet. We had always heard about the legendary bomb shelter that Grandpa had built in the shadow of World War II, when the threat of an invasion by the Japanese Army seemed a very real prospect.

Its been blocked off by tons of .. well...junk until yesterday afternoon, when my brother managed to move all the stuff out and create a clearway.

This is the first time that the air raid shelter has been seen by human eyes in over fifty years, and its a great pleasure to share it with you all....

****One of the reasons I forgot to mention as to why we havent been able to get in - Grandpa made a mistake of some sort with the building and it regularly flooded - in fact so much so that most of the time the shelter was actually full to the roof and even up the stairs - which explains the rusting.
Given we have had such a bad drought in the last few years the water has receded almost totally and now allows for access !

So this is one of the entrances - you cannot even see the other one at the moment as there are about 10 kitchen sinks on top of it (yes thats right, kitchen sinks !)  Look to the entrance at lower left, there is still a shelf there and I had to squeeze thru that - difficult when youre 6ft 6 !

Leading down to the shelter. Note very rusted door on the right hand side. I felt all sorts of feelings going down here, having wanted to do this since I was a kid, thinking about the impact that the war had on people to the extent that they would build bomb shelters etc etc.....

And then here we are - not seen since the late 40's. Clearly made out of some sort of metal given the rust factor going on !  To the left you can see wooden beams where the seats/beds were. Other stuff is junk just chucked down here over the years. It has also flooded on numerous occassions - there is still an inch of water there now and it is quite rank and damp. The hole on the other side is the escape hatch/second entrance. This could hold six to eight easily.....

Actually this could be turned into a very good wine cellar once all the stuff is removed :-) My mum recounts coming down here as a youngster to have snogging sessions with boys - ewwwww ! Thanks mum !  But there is no light source, so imagine sitting there in the dark waiting for the bombs, which never came to Melbourne thankfully....

Looking back up the way I came down....

So there you are, after all this time, its still there in inner Melbourne, and as I have mentioned to a number of people, probably one of the last, if not the last remaining bomb shelter on a private residence in the city....

Tuesday March 2, 2010

Righty ho !  Before I get into the promised telephony equipment , heres a little (actually quite big) beauty I found today 

So yes its RAAF but could anyone explain to me what it is for and what it does?  Love it though, looks remarkably good given that it was crammed into a corner!

***Update - Possible explanation from a reader -

 " If you look on wartime photos of bombers and transports there is a directional loop antenna sticking out of the top of the fuselage - like a big basketball ring on edge. Used in plotting the bearing for transmitting stations to assist with navigation as I understand it. I imagine what you have is the graduated incremental rotater for that."

Now onto the phone materials, and this is just the first run of things I could bring back today. I was primarily tied down with scrap merchants visiting today for the stuff that is beyond saving for anyone ...

First up are some condensers - I assume these are for signal improvement, but am probably well off the path. Here are two Stromberg Carlson, one Western Electric and the little black one at the top is an IMP

***UPDATE - from a reader

 "Telephones use a DC speech carrier modulated in sympathy with sound waves varying the resistance of the transmitter. The RING voltage is AC generated from the exchange, or another telephone with a hand generator. The condenser isolates the AC ring circuit from the DC speech circuit."

A shame this is in such bad condition, but I would love to know what was inside this - must have been a switching unit of some sort - all those tags in the middle still have something typed into them, like Secretary, Typist, Chairman, Clerk etc etc - just fascinating from an era long gone....

****UPDATE - from a reader 

"The Western Eelctric tin cover is off one of their DC signalling intercom type phones. The sort of system with many stations in a large office or factory. They are interesting, but not wildy valuable, even when complete. The DESIGN is old, but they were produced for many years.

The Prot Blocks return !!!  But this one is a sealed Western Electric box so I felt compelled to pop it in here for posterity :-)  

Now I am stumped - I hand't seen these until today - any idea what they might be for?  I am only assuming its phone related in some way.....


*****UPDATE - from a reader  "The next things are EYEBALL INDICATORS. These superseded the old switchboard drop shutters, where the AC ring from the subscriber's phone generator energised a relay style magnet coil, which lifted a metal latch and dropped the shutter, revealing to the operator a number associated with the calling subscriber. What you have is the Eyeball, which was so arranged electrically as to wink down in response to incoming AC ring voltage from the subscriber's telephone, and so revealing the number painted on the eye. "

Given its wood base I believe this comes from an old exchange - not much other info I can provide, which is why I'm writing this blog in the hope someone out there knows the answers !

*****UPDATE - from a reader (same reader has been been invaluable this week - my sincere thanks!)

"The wood based HEDGEHOG COIL is a design where the functions of the laminations of a normal transformer are actually done using bundles of wires as a core. Yours is definitely Telephone, and may have been a matching coil used in early Common Battery telephony where a central battery at the exchange powered all phones. These types of transformers were part of an arrangement to smooth out fluctuations in battery voltage caused by conversations on different length lines. Another application for these transformers would be for matching an unbalanced telephone line to a balanced line in the days when such single-wire, earth return systems were in use. A farm single-wire line to the road would require a matching transformer to connect to the two-wire system out on the main road. Speech currents and also ringing voltages are thus transferred from one system to the other without causing any problems due to earthing the main two-wire transmission system. Other transformers of the same pattern on a similar base had six terminals, with centre taps on each of the 2 coils. These were used as part of a system to superimpose telegraph circuits on working phone lines without interference."

Any ideas as to what this is and how it was used - nice handwriting on back but cannot work out what it means ....

****UPDATE  from a reader "The item is a single gong, DC interrupter type bell, used on doorbells and some simple house telephone intercom set ups. Missing gong,obviously."

I found these under a mountain of rubbish - and was amazed that one still had globes in it !

Again, no idea other than possibly a relay/induction/retard coil....any help ?

****UPDATE - from a reader "The smaller coil on the wood base may be a later version of the hedgehog transformer above, for use in Central Battery telephone exchange systems as described, as far as I can work out. It is (British) Western Electric by part number"

Same for this, would be nice if they had part numbers but thats asking a little too much !!!!

****UPDATE from a reader  "The next, skeleton looking, incomplete item on a wood base is part of yet another, quite early c.1900, DC interrupter type bell."

Again no idea, but interestingly in the second photo, in top left hand corner of the unit is stamped PMG-30 which is something to do with PostMaster General....

*****UPDATE from a reader
"The PMG stamped item in your hand below that is yet another variety of aDC bell or mechanical buzzer, incomplete."

??????????

****UPDATE  from  a reader  "The thing with all the question marks on a wood panel is part of an array of electro-mechanical equipment to do with fire alarm monitoring. 

Why would I put these in? Well they appear to have been from an exchange - there are loads and loads of them around the shed, some are beyond repair and others are pretty good. 

****UPDATE  from a reader  "The terminal blocks on wood bases, last photo in this day's series, are exchange mainframe tag blocks. Part of the wiring arrangements allowing flexibility in connecting any outside pair of line wires to any inside circuit associated with an individual number on the exchange"

So thats the end of todays show and tell. There is still more phone stuff in the car and another mystery military object which again may be from a tank, but my back has gone again and I need to go cook dinner for my family :-)

Until next time .....