atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems Antique Telephones My trip to The Telephone Museum (25 photos)

The Telephone Museum is located in Ellsworth, Maine. A friend of mine (probably some of you know him) got me more interested in telephones and CO switches after him talking about the museum. So last year I finally got up there to check it out, and became a member on the trip.

Anyway, I went back this past weekend to see what's new and to help out. Ended up hanging some insulation and helping my friend tone out some cut 30something pair cables going into a D4 Channel Bank wire wrap terminal block (see below).



The good stuff:








A #3 Crossbar switch that was formerly in the Bradford, ME central office. It's pretty darn cool. We were screwing around with calling the milliwatt line from separate numbers and occasionally the #3 would throw a fit, get angry, slap relays, and throw alarms.

The power plant. It's expensive to run so it is turned off during most of the year. My friend let me power up the #3 CO switch while I was there. Only blew 5 fuses. (noted which ones to pull before powering on next time).

#5 Crossbar CO switch that was in Belfast, ME. It wasn't on while I was there as it requires a lot of power.

I don't know about most of this. My interest is more Outside Plant and CO operations/maintenance.

If you get a chance and are up for a drive, head over to the Museum.

https://ellsworthme.org/ringring/index.html

Great display too bad they don't have an old plunger line switch to demo.

That is very neat!!

Very cool!

One CO that I missed photographing was the former Frenchboro CO. One of the members of the museum used to run a telephone company (actually one of the smallest in the US) on an island off the coast of ME. He sold the business. Years later the new owners abandoned the CO for modern equipment and he got the CO back. Transported it back to mainland, and donated it to the museum.

One other cool thing I didn't mention is that this is a working museum. Most of the phones are wired up so you can call any of them. AND the museum is hooked up to other collections in the US via VoIP. :toast:

I'm probably going back in a month, so if anyone has any specific requests for close-up photos or a video of one of the switches in action, let me know.

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Outstanding post, indeed!