sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring Nice pic of a trunk line.

1200-pair, 24-gauge, subscriber (not trunk) cable.

What made you go with 1,200 pair, Arthur? I knew that it was too large to be 600 pair, but I was leaning more toward 1,800 myself.

I agree about the 'trunk cable' part. We just refer to it as exchange cable around here, but that is even older terminology.

I'd forgotten about the lead sleeves and pouring melted lead. I worked with a splicer once in a while. Got to carry sleeves from the truck. Sat there while he had a smoke in the manhole while he worked barehanded with the lead. Wow, those were some days! Funny we don't all have more health problems!

Jim

You may be right, looks at least 1200, but may be 1800.

How long would it take a splicer to connect a cable count like that?

The New York company allows one hour per 100 pairs in a conventional (one in, one out) splice. That includes set up, cutting the enclosure, preparing the cable ends and putting on the group pigtails, using 3M modules for the splicing, at 25 pairs at a time, and doing the final closing up and air-testing.

In reality, once the set up is ready, a good splicer can do 400 pairs (16 modules) an hour. That time is increased slightly when working with paper cable or filled cable.

When working on a cable failure, the rule is "make yourself comfortable" because a comfortable sitting position is conducive to error-free and aesthetically-pleasing work. If you take an extra 15 minutes getting comfortable, it will pay off during the work session, because it you're hot, cold, wet, bent over, lying in the mud at the bottom of a manhole, or stretching your arms over your head, your productivity and accuracy will suffer.

The work order requires that you document time of arrival, time of first pair spliced, last pair spliced, and all finals completed. Too bad it's a dying/dead art, because it was a great job for over a century.

With B- Connectors they used to look for 600 pair in a 7 hour day and would allow a 3% failure rate (which I always felt was too high). My old partner and dear friend Morgan Harris used to do 1,000 pair in a 7 hour day with NO errors/failures, but he was a lunatic and at one time was the fastest splicer in the Bell System.

Lead sleeves took longer.

And absolutely - get comfortable.

Sam

I had a distant cousin who worked as a splicer for Alberta Govt Telephones before the govt sold out to Telus and his biggest fear was cutting into the wrong cable in a dark joint use manhole and finding a high voltage power cable.

I still work with a lot of old school splicers who refuse to use modules. They still splice half a pair at a time with purple picabonds. After opening the splice and setting up the rail, mounting the third hand, and getting the right seat/splice height right they can fly through a splice. Its all personal preference but I think the old picabond system made a prettier splice. It's getting harder and harder to find the old splice tools as it is old but proven technology.

It certainly made a much smaller splice. Those modules take up a lot of room.