Telephones Cabling Test Van

History

Finding a fault in a buried telephone cable is a matter of instruments, and the instruments were too many and too delicate to carry in a van and set up in the rain. The test van has its own integral power supply, and the equipment photographed inside is the duct TV set-up: a camera control unit on the left, video control in the centre and a monitor on the right, for driving a camera along a duct and watching what it found. The vehicle is SGW 433F, fleet number 292689, registered in 1968 on the Gen 2B Forward Control chassis. Its tall laboratory body, upper windows and rear stabiliser jacks — to hold it steady while people worked at benches inside — are visible in the photograph.