[GreenKeys] AT&T Norway, Illinois

[Ken Clinkman]

Don,

Do you remember Ron Merideth-a trainer at Telcordia, a supervisor at 10 S. 
Canal in AT&T and IBT's DDS Hub office?  He used to work at Norway, early in 
his career and told us an interesting story about the bucket alarm the techs 
set up there.

Apparently the roof leaked for a while and they had to put up tarps to catch 
the water and protect the equipment.  The techs decided to tweak management 
into action so set up a hose from the tarp into a bucket.  In the bucket 
they put the guts of a toilet tank, so that when the bucket was full, the 
float would be raised enought to make contact closures that were wired over 
to the alarm by, bringing in an alarm.  On the fuse hung a sign that said 
"Time to empty the bucket".


Happy New Year to you and your family,
Ken Clinkman


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don Robert House" <Packard42 at gmail.com>
To: <greenkeys at mailman.qth.net>
Cc: "Ben Stephens" <K9kom at aol.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 8:49 PM
Subject: AT&T Norway, Illinois


> Many thanks to Ben Stephans for this look back into our history...
>
>
> On 10 Jan 2009, at 10:05 AM, K9kom at aol.com wrote:
>
> Hi Don,
>
> I think that was the AT&T hardened site I visited many years ago.  I 
> would have been part of the Autovon system, which had four major 4- wire 
> switching centers with redundant trunks to the others.  Each  phone or 
> data station homed on two central offices, so that if one got  nuked out, 
> they would still have dial tone to whatever was left.  It  was a brilliant 
> piece of engineering.
>
> Finding the location was easy, thanks to the huge microwave tower.   There 
> were only two unimpressive metal buildings, one being a garage.   I was 
> told to go into the other one and then go down the stairs.  What  I found 
> was really impressive.
>
> The first floor down from ground level was filled with air filters and 
> blowers, to filter out the radioactive dust from a nearby nuclear  blast 
> if the facility survived.  I went through two huge blast doors,  at least 
> a foot thick, which were so heavy that motors had to open and  then close 
> them behind me.
>
> The second floor down was for the carrier equipment.  There were racks 
> and racks of channel banks and their support equipment.  The third  floor 
> held the switching equipment, and the fourth down was the  control center 
> with people at control consoles.  The fifth floor had  meeting rooms and 
> repair shops, while the final, sixth, floor had  living quarters, kitchens 
> and dining rooms.
>
> The Cold War having ended, there were few people there, and the  original 
> switching equipment, which had been crossbar, was replaced  with much 
> smaller 5ESS vintage solid state switches.  I suspect that  these 
> switching centers are now nodes on fiber optic networks, and the 
> microwave towers have not been used for years.   But any time you see  one 
> of those huge towers, remember that it is sort of like an iceberg  --  
> there is at least as much stuff below ground level as there is above.
>
> 73,
>
> C. Bennett (Ben) Stephens
> Interline Telecom Service Corp.
> Lake Forest, Illinois