atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information WECO 555 Cordboard so far...

Hi Mods, if this is not the proper place for this, please move to where it belongs! Thanks, Joe

Here is an update on my 555 PBX cord board project.

This project started out as the frame of a 55X cord board that was given to me by Wallace Jacobs (Jake’s old Western Electric Supply). I drove down to El Dorado Kansas in late spring to get some ladder rack sections, and returned with the ladder rack as well as a cord board frame. Here it is before I did anything with it.



The frame spent the next couple of weeks in the garage before I took it out, pressure washed it and brought it into the family / Teletype room to begin restoration.

The first thing that was done to it was that four almost NOS cord circuits were installed along with the front bezel sans the middle strip. A lone designation strip was installed as well, and my chief cord board restoration supervisor Kotobuki, was asking me when the desk would be found and installed.



The next phase (at Kotobuki’s insistence) was to find and procure a desk (From Jake’s) and to get it installed pronto. It is not dignified for the restoration supervisor to be balanced on top of a cord board frame. Here it is just after it was installed, much to Kotobuki’s approval.



The next thing that was found and installed was the current limiting resistance lamp socket and the side panel mounting brackets. Granted that these are not very exciting, but they are very necessary to the proper functioning of a 555 (so sayeth Kotobuki).





Next, six more cord circuits were procured, and four were immediately installed after cleaning the Bakelite front panels. The other two needed a small amount of work before installation; one simply needing a cover mounting bracket screw replaced (it had stripped threads) and the other needing the mounting bracket. The one needing just the replacement screw has been since replaced, but the other needing the bracket has not. I will either have to find a bracket or fabricate one. Here are the photos for this…






As you can see, I will also have to fabricate a couple of the brown fiber board strips that cover the cord circuits’ innards. It is these fiberboard strips that mount to the missing bracket on the one cord circuit.

Since this forum only allows 8 photos per post.

End of part one…