This photograph shows Parkend Station, the Goods Shed and the Signal Box. Parkend Exchange is situated in the Goods Shed but is not accessible to the general public.

The two photographs below show the main equipment rack for Parkend Exchange assembled, but without the rack wiring, being built in my home garage. The small rack at the far end of the Parkend equipment was the small 1+9 strowger that served my home at the time.

The top shelf has final selectors and a test selector mounted on it. The shelf below has five group selectors and five spare positions. Below that are fifty line circuits, five line finders and space for five more. The linefinder is controlled from its associated group selector and is an integral part of the group selector circuit. The bottom shelf has the MDF, outgoing and bothway junction relay sets, a ring back relay set, a start distribution set and an S and Z pulse generator.

The equipment has come from a PABX4. It uses battery testing techniques in a similar way to a UAX13, but oddly, the testing and holding wire is designated H rather than the usual P.

The fuse panel for the exchange has been mounted on the rear of the rack behind the group selectors.

The rectifier and ringer are mounted on a second small rack with four 12 volt batteries (not shown) on the floor behind the rack. They are under a protective cover. The exchange voltage, load current and charge current are displayed on separate meters. The five supervisory lamps on the rack show conditions on the control wires to the ringer and power equipments.

Page provided by John Bathgate This page was last updated on 9th May 2008