the telephones are in!

The installation of wired telephones for communications between the dispatcher and all the main yards and OS points is now completed. I guess it took about 20 hours. The most difficult part was reading and understand the manuals that came with the PBX and the phones. I was finally able to reset the addresses of the phones so that a single digit press will give you any of the 7 "phone booths" on the layout.

It ends up to be pretty simple. The PBX is a box with 8 sockets for phone lines (about $70). The phones are simple AT&T "Trimline" push-button phones (about $14 apiece new). I put the PBX in the middle of the room underneath the Everett peninsula, and then ran telephone cables underneath the floor in every direction (easy to do, since the floor is covered with sectional foam squares that are easy to pull up.). The phones are mounted to short pieces of 4" wide 3/8" plywood attached to L brackets behind the front fascia in the best spots for them. It will be fun to see how this improves future operating sessions. I suspect it will. Here are some photos:

The PBX box with all the phone cables plugged in:

A typical installation, this one at Argo Yard at the approach to South Staging (note the rotary switch for setting which track in the staging yard you are going into or out of):

A close-up of the directory of phone numbers:

And, finally, shots of the mounting setups, at Stacy, followed by two views of the phone serving both Skykomish (East Staging) on the upper level, and the Shoreline between Ballard and Mukilteo on the lower level: