Spending a Penny...
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: 75' from the runway edge and 150' from the threshold
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trunk Sub system
The Trunk sub, as in subscriber, system was an expensive way of making a call from one trunk sub number (Wattisham tower was IIRC Ipswich TS2) being directly connected to another trunk sub. The (expensive) calls had to be logged in a notebook next to the trunk sub phone, an ordinary black bakelite model. I seem to remember having to get an urgent message to ATC at Stornoway in 69/70 and called Stornoway TS1 and asked for Air traffic control only to be to told by an early sounding Scottish lady that, 'he was away to lunch"
A342
A342
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: SW England
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You don't scare me Pontifex- you failed to kill me over a period of five years in an earlier existence! 
Brilliant photo by the way AARON - my dad started as a patrol around 1929 and he had a push bike for his first couple of years of service
Brilliant photo by the way AARON - my dad started as a patrol around 1929 and he had a push bike for his first couple of years of service
Join Date: Dec 2008
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Trunk sub (or EMSS) numbers were apparently allocated to essential services and military sites etc - or so it says here.
If Waddington was Lincoln 'sub trunk 2', I wonder if Scampton had a similarly 'high' number? '1' or '3' perhaps?
If Waddington was Lincoln 'sub trunk 2', I wonder if Scampton had a similarly 'high' number? '1' or '3' perhaps?
Originally Posted by Pontius Navigator
I don't doubt what Peter Hennessey found in the Archives but I wonder if it was founded on ignorance and secrecy. On the Ops Desk at Waddington was a black telephone. It had no dial, and as far as we knew, no purpose. It never rang; we never used it. The number was Lincoln Sub Trunk 2. We decided to try it. One day I rang the operator, asked for the number, moments later it was picked up on the Ops Desk. It was obviously a super efficient network but one of which we mere cannon fodder were ignorant. Maybe that was what i t was intended for.
That would be a connection to the Emergency Manual Switching System (EMSS). See UK Emergency Manual Switching System All BBC transmitter sites were connected to the EMSS, as were the TOMs at Broadcasting House and Bush House. .
