Early BR computers memories and history

[MyRule1]

7 hours ago, MartinRS said:

When I was a trainee technician in the S&T in the 1970s I can remember having to collect the punched tape from the TOPS office at Tinsley Yard and walking down to Tinsley Tower SB with it. The TOPS office was opposite the BR exchange at Tinsley, just across the foyer. I could never figure out why BR didn't put a data link in, and just spew the data to to a punched tape machine in the tower. I think the punched tape machines were made by Addo.
Earlier in this thread someone mentioned fax machines. I can remember being called-out to look at a (Ventrex?) fax machine, in an office next to the Woodhead Route. The whole page of the fax was a solid mass of colour. It was found that every time a Class 76 passed the office when a fax was being received a huge EMP pulse would corrupt the data.

Although not a early BR memory this is linked to BR and was brought to mind another story of railway related computer faults, 

 

My career in computing started in 1971 with Barclay's Bank and this was as they were completing the merger with Martins Bank. As part of the merger the banks were standardising on IBM systems with disk storage, whereas the earlier systems used magnetic tape as their main storage. One of Martin's bank was in the Willesden area and they discovered that the failure rate of disk drives as very high. After investigation it was discover that this was due to vibration from the nearby railway. I don't know if this was the NLL or the WCML

 

Th disk drives in those days relied on the read/write head "floating" a minute distance above the disk platter and if the head came into contact with  the platter both the head and platter would fail.

[SamThomas]

11 hours ago, MyRule1 said:

The disk drives in those days relied on the read/write head "floating" a minute distance above the disk platter and if the head came into contact with  the platter both the head and platter would fail.

Would that be why you had to "park" the drives in early PC's before shutting them down/moving them ?

[08221]

1 hour ago, SamThomas said:

Would that be why you had to "park" the drives in early PC's before shutting them down/moving them ?

Yes, in the good old days of computers!

 

I once dropped an IBM 8086 PC down a flight of stairs, took it back to my office, resoldered a couple of components that had become detached from the motherboard and it worked a treat - try doing that these days!

 

Quite scary when I realise how long I’ve worked in IT and how things have changed......

[C126]

15 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

In the mid-70's, I used to have to operate a telex machine ...

 

Any reminiscences of telex machines and teleprinters greatly appreciated!  I managed to operate one only once (and that a modern dot-matrix 'Cheetah'), before they were replaced by 'fax' machines.  Telexes have always seemed so romantic a method of communication to me (if very noisy, I am told).

[Michael Hodgson]

13 hours ago, MyRule1 said:

One of Martin's bank was in the Willesden area and they discovered that the failure rate of disk drives as very high. After investigation it was discover that this was due to vibration from the nearby railway. I don't know if this was the NLL or the WCML

 

I remember working on the installation of a new minicomputer system for an Accepting House in the City.  Usually the advice was that ground floor or basement was preferred to minimise vibration problems etc.  However the basement  in question wasn't the usual bank vault - as the building was directly above an Underground line, and you not only felt vibration you could hear the passing trains!  We put it on the 3rd floor, as obviously we couldn't have the top floor boardroom!

[4630]

4 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

 However the basement  in question wasn't the usual bank vault - as the building was directly above an Underground line, and you not only felt vibration you could hear the passing trains!  We put it on the 3rd floor, as obviously we couldn't have the top floor boardroom!

Quite common in some central London locations, particularly where ‘cut and cover’ was the method used for construction of the early lines.
 

In the late 1980s my then employer had a large office on High Holborn and Central line trains were clearly audible from the basement levels there.  

[Oldddudders]

Telex? BR had an NTN network of these machines, although it didn’t seem to permeate much of Southern Region. But from about 1971 each of the three SR Divisional Controls was equipped with a simple transmitter and had links to receivers at key stations along each line of route, who were supposed to disseminate messages to minor stations. 

 

This could prove extremely useful, as e.g. the Rolling Stock controller could send out a whole sheaf of amendments to the Traffic Regulator at Brighton with alterations including swaps to get green-carded units into depot etc. 

 

There were two means of transmitting. You could create a paper tape of your message, then send it in one hit - or type it in real time. As none of us could type the latter was lugubrious. On one occasion, during a go-slow, when suburban trains were less than numerous, staff at Streatham Common were gathered anxiously round the teleprinter, which was receiving painfully slowly, letter by letter, not least due to the operator awaiting news from his area colleagues. One of the guys watching the receiver asked “Is he going slow, too?” OTOH, sending via a tape could earn the receiver the name ‘demented woodpecker’.

 

The other risk in sending stuff live, rather than via a tape, was the utter frustration of typing a lengthy message only for someone to ring up and ask if you were trying to send a message - because their receiver had run out of paper! This was known to invoke the full panoply of anglo-saxon expression……

[St Enodoc]

On 09/12/2021 at 21:31, Vanfit said:

I recall the large computer system installed in a clean room area of the old Reading Signal Works, I think it might have been at least partly for payroll.

 

There was an associated standby diesel generator set that we maintained from Reading Outdoor Machinery Department (ODM). An electrician was permanently allocated to the Signal Works for electrical/general machine maintenance etc and was assisted by a fitter for routine maintenance and testing of the standby set.

 

Payroll data inputting (card punching) was carried out on the podium of Western Tower Reading.

The father of a friend of mine worked on the development of that, I think. He was a second-generation railwayman, my friend became a third and his daughter in turn is now the fourth generation of that particular railway family.

 

Changing tack slightly, when I was on the Southern we had a Superbrain micro-computer installed, for work study/productivity purposes as I recall. The drill was to switch it on as soon as you arrived then go for a cup of tea. When you got back it would just about have finished booting up. It was replaced after not very long by a Sirius, which in turn was replaced by an early IBM PC. The rest is history.

[Michael Hodgson]

37 minutes ago, C126 said:

 

Any reminiscences of telex machines and teleprinters greatly appreciated!  I managed to operate one only once (and that a modern dot-matrix 'Cheetah'), before they were replaced by 'fax' machines.  Telexes have always seemed so romantic a method of communication to me (if very noisy, I am told).

My father worked for the GPO telegraphs working on telegrams and teleprinters before he was old enough to enlist and do his bit for King & Country.  As that was a reserved occupation he wouldn't have been allowed to join up, but there was an exception for aircrew volunteers.  All of the long distance lines to the rest of the country ran via a plug board, and many had been re-routed so that there were alternative circuits should anywhere be bombed.   Dad said many of the older staff had drink problems and one late shift one of these colleagues came in the worse for wear, grabbed an armful of these plugs and promptly fell over pulling them all out, disconnecting Newcastle from the rest of the country.  Not normally a big deal, you would just plug them back in, and any interrupted calls could be restarted.  However, as a precaution to confuse potential occupying forces, all the labels had been removed from the sockets (like removing station nameboards!).  So he had to rest of the shift sending WRU messages to each line, and then having to go through procedures to confirm that the enemy had not invaded the North East!

 

As part of his GPO duties he was experienced in sending messages very fast in morse code. 

As an RAF Navigator he had to learn all over again to send morse.  However the RAF didn't require the same speed, and he had to slow down to the speed of the receiving station.  He said at the examination at the end of the training course, he and a few other ex-GPO trainees transmitted and correctly received their messages considerably faster than the instructors could follow! 

 

 

I worked for several years for an international bank which made a very large number of interbank payments on behalf of other banks and had a lot of our own foreign exchange transactions.  These were all done by telex, and the gist of many of these messages was Pay $xxx million to xxx at xxx bank and sent in plain language.  The risk of fraud is self-evident, so they were authenticated by what was known as a "Telegraphic Test Code", calculated manually by banks at both ends using secret code books - we employed over 40 staff in London alone doing nothing but these calculations.   As internal auditors, we were concerned about several weaknesses inherent in this system (although these seem not to have been exploited in practice) and much of my work was pushing for the system now used, which meant changing to encrypted messages via the SWIFT network. 

 

The bank had suffered one big loss because of a telex machine running out of paper.  A message was sent by another bank on behalf of a shipping company to settle the fortnightly lease payment to the ship owner, this was relatively small.   Our telex machine send a good answerback, but we didn't have the message so the payment wasn't made.  Unfortunately for us, it wasn't just a question of paying the money late plus a bit of interest.   Non-payment gave the owners the excuse they needed to cancel the long term lease, which suited them as market prices for shipping had moved massively in their favour since the contract was signed, and after we lost the legal case we had to pay the difference in cost for the remainder of the term o the lease.

 

[Michael Crofts]

5 hours ago, C126 said:

 

Any reminiscences of telex machines and teleprinters greatly appreciated!  I managed to operate one only once (and that a modern dot-matrix 'Cheetah'), before they were replaced by 'fax' machines.  Telexes have always seemed so romantic a method of communication to me (if very noisy, I am told).

 

Here's my Telex railway-related reminiscence.

 

In 1972 I bought six 2ft gauge steam locos from Empresa Carbonifera do Douro in northern Portugal, for import to the UK in partnership with Alan Keef. Several visits were required for this project. In those days telephone communication between Portugal and the rest of the world was inefficient, unreliable, and very expensive. The cost of making calls was such that it was a disaster to make a call and find the person you were calling was out of their office or on another line, and then the same thing happened in reverse. So Telex was used by everyone who did any international work. I spent quite a lot of time on borrowed Telex machines, using both punched tape and direct connections. Telex messages were often written like telegrams, for example using 'STOP' instead of a full stop. The expression 'EEEE' denoted a typo to be followed by a correction. In effect the telex worked like email does now except that there was no question of anyone having a machine on their desk. The machines were large, beautifully made, as solid as rocks, and often housed in "Telex rooms" with dedicated operators who would collect hand-written messages (or more often take dictation), send the message, then bring the printed reply back. It was a bit unusual for someone like me to be allowed to use a firm's machine but I found them fascinating and my shipping agents in Porto were very obliging. I also had a couple of friends in England who helped at that end. IIRC correctly one set up the connection using a dial instrument like an STD telephone and the machine would clatter into life and type a code when the machine-to-machine connection was made. I can't remember how charges were levied. I suspect there was a charge for the length of time one was connected, just like a telephone call, which encouraged the use of pre-prepared punched-tape messages and made "real time" conversations uneconomic, although during a period of crisis during the transaction I did use them in that way sometimes. Yes, they were very noisy.

 

Here is a sample message from 49 years ago:

[peach james]

5 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

 

 

The other risk in sending stuff live, rather than via a tape, was the utter frustration of typing a lengthy message only for someone to ring up and ask if you were trying to send a message - because their receiver had run out of paper! This was known to invoke the full panoply of anglo-saxon expression……

In a word- Tunny.

Without that happening, then the history of computing might be vastly different...
 

How's that for random thoughts !

James

*  (if you don't know, Tunny was the UK code word for a telex based code system the German high command moved to from Enigma.  Some dolt resent a message typed out on it, and gave away about 50% of the HOW for the code wheels involved.  Colossus was invented to decode Tunny, because the tape readers couldn't handle the high speed synchronization of two tapes of 5 bit tape.  Leading to Leeds Mk 2...and eventually to all this talk about BR Computers, and the www and well, so much ! )

[The Stationmaster]

One of the more widespread use of telex/teleprinter machines was for the ATI (Advanced Traffic Information) system introduced in the mid 1960s which meant machines were required in places such as marshalling yard Inspector's offices.  The system was quite a good one but unlike TOPS it had no built in checks so could transmit rubbish if the input details were incorrect.

 

Inoutline yard A would send someone along a train to take wagon label details using a small tape recorder type machine am nd the telex/teleprinter operator would then prepare a punched tape using the information from the tape recorder (not all yards had anything as sophisticated as a tape recorder so it was a pencil and paper job for the lesser places.  The tape would then be fed into the machine which transmitted the train formation details to other yards where the train was booked to call along its line of route.  

 

at the receiving yards the machine would simply print out the details line by line each successive line corresponding to one wagon (rather like a TOPS Train List which enabled shunts to be planned before the train arrived which would usually save time.  An intermediate yard where the formation changed would then either send a revised list or, in some cases, simply send a message indicating what changes it had made to the formation.  The system worked quite well from what I saw of it when working in a marshalling yard in 1967 although you could get occasional errors in vehicle numbers although generally the route codes, in particular, tended to be accurate.  At Margam hump yard I understand that the ATI message was used to cut another punch tape which could work the points etc as the train was being humped.

 

The system remained in use on some parts of the WR until the arrival of TOP{S in 1974/75.

 

[31A]

5 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

 At Margam hump yard I understand that the ATI message was used to cut another punch tape which could work the points etc as the train was being humped.

 

 

Is that what is going on on this film, from about 16 minutes onwards?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJx6MdesrY4

 

[The Stationmaster]

9 minutes ago, 31A said:

 

Is that what is going on on this film, from about 16 minutes onwards?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJx6MdesrY4

 

Basically 'yes' although there they aren't using ATI information but are creating a cut list by going along the train as they make the cuts.

[iands]

When I "came out of my time", I applied for and got a Technician's job on Telecoms at Doncaster. In the Telegraph Office (on the Grain Bank for people who know where that is) they still had Creed type teleprinters. A short while later they began a renewal programme of replacing the Creeds with a 'modern' electronic teleprinter, a Trend 800 IIRC. What got me was that the Trend, supposedly modern and full of electronics,  weighed almost as much as the Creed did which was a hernia-inducing piece of kit when it had to be moved. Magical to see it operating though when set up correctly.

 

As a (slight) aside, when I started as a Trainee S&T Tech in 1973, on entering Shaftholme Jnc SB the first thing I saw on reaching the top of the stairs (they were internal to the building) was a single-needle telegraph. Although not long disconnected, the signaller demonstrated to me how it worked, I was amazed at how quick he could send a message. Jump forward 5 years to 1978 and Doncaster TO, they still had a connected and  still functional single-needle telegraph to Retford station, although no one actually used it anymore. It wasn't taken out until the Doncaster resignalling scheme in the early 1980s.

[Mike Storey]

7 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

Telex? BR had an NTN network of these machines, although it didn’t seem to permeate much of Southern Region. But from about 1971 each of the three SR Divisional Controls was equipped with a simple transmitter and had links to receivers at key stations along each line of route, who were supposed to disseminate messages to minor stations. 

 

 

 

I agree NTN was marvellous when it eventually arrived, but I believe it was later than you recall. The "proposed" BR National Telecomms Plan was not even approved until 1972, when just a very few pilot trials had been run.

 

I did not come across NTN in anger until moving to Brighton in the mid-80's (by which time a basic TOPS terminal had also been installed, although no-one quite knew what to do with it). The only NTN machines we had in the Medway, up until that point at least, were with the Guards Regulator at Gillingham, and in the AMO alongside a TOPS terminal (which I operated part of the time), also at Gillingham. There was nothing at a busy location like Queenborough Yard except the telling bone...... crazy!

 

[Wheatley]

9 hours ago, C126 said:

 

Any reminiscences of telex machines and teleprinters greatly appreciated!  

Around 1988 a chap called Kevin in Sheffield AMO had a bright idea to equip signalboxes with some redundant PCs and printers rather than skipping them, and creating a local network to improve train running information. It tied in with the creation of the shortlived Sheffield Control. The idea was, I think, that we could send information to Control faster than by telephoning and constantly getting the engaged tone when it was all going wrong. 

 

So this thing was shoe-horned into a 32 lever box already crammed to the rafters with kit, some of it essential, and off it went spewing out paper. We got a test message every morning, the Control log and the occasional "2F04 CAPE DEMIC".

 

That was as far as two way communications went. We enjoyed reading the Control log each morning (I still have the printouts of some of their more bizarre entries) but as no-one had negotiated this with the LDC or even asked us, no information ever flowed back. 

 

However, it did flow between the boxes in the form of long lists of filthy jokes, a sort of prehistoric blog listing the many failings of the various managers inflicted upon us, and some quite inventive ASCII porn.

 

Eventually the combination of hi tech equipment and the soot and heat from the pot-bellied stove got too much and our PC expired. I don't think taping up the air vents to stop the soot getting in helped. 

 

[5BarVT]

9 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

The father of a friend of mine worked on the development of that, I think. He was a second-generation railwayman, my friend became a third and his daughter in turn is now the fourth generation of that particular railway family.

 

Changing tack slightly, when I was on the Southern we had a Superbrain micro-computer installed, for work study/productivity purposes as I recall. The drill was to switch it on as soon as you arrived then go for a cup of tea. When you got back it would just about have finished booting up. It was replaced after not very long by a Sirius, which in turn was replaced by an early IBM PC. The rest is history.

S&T Reading had a Superbrain back in about ‘79 and it lived in a meeting room where eating and drinking (and smoking back then) were prohibited.  None of this ‘coffee while Zooming’!

Paul.

[C126]

Thanks as always for everyone's comments.  You will have guessed this is another technology that makes me envious at being born ten years too late.  Was there use of any teleprinters with the two-colour ribbons (red for incoming (RX) messages and black for out-going (TX))?  How did one tell which was which with one colour?

[The Stationmaster]

17 hours ago, iands said:

When I "came out of my time", I applied for and got a Technician's job on Telecoms at Doncaster. In the Telegraph Office (on the Grain Bank for people who know where that is) they still had Creed type teleprinters. A short while later they began a renewal programme of replacing the Creeds with a 'modern' electronic teleprinter, a Trend 800 IIRC. What got me was that the Trend, supposedly modern and full of electronics,  weighed almost as much as the Creed did which was a hernia-inducing piece of kit when it had to be moved. Magical to see it operating though when set up correctly.

 

As a (slight) aside, when I started as a Trainee S&T Tech in 1973, on entering Shaftholme Jnc SB the first thing I saw on reaching the top of the stairs (they were internal to the building) was a single-needle telegraph. Although not long disconnected, the signaller demonstrated to me how it worked, I was amazed at how quick he could send a message. Jump forward 5 years to 1978 and Doncaster TO, they still had a connected and  still functional single-needle telegraph to Retford station, although no one actually used it anymore. It wasn't taken out until the Doncaster resignalling scheme in the early 1980s.

The use of single needle telegraph circuits continued until quite late on on the GN mainline, mainly for train running advices between 'boxes and to/from Control.  i understand they were still being used in the early 1970s.  I heard some years back that they were still used to some extent at the south of the route until the various rationalisations and stages prior to the opening of KX panel took place. (John Hinson can I think quote a reliable date for when they were discontinued).

 

You arrived a bit late to find one on the Western although I'm told there was definitely still a single needle instrument in Oxford Telegraph Office  In the late 1960s and I worked in Western Tower at that time with a chap who had worked single needle telegraph for years as a Telegraph Clerk - he reckoned that it was something you never forgot once you'd learnt it..

[iands]

19 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

One of the more widespread use of telex/teleprinter machines was for the ATI (Advanced Traffic Information) system introduced in the mid 1960s which meant machines were required in places such as marshalling yard Inspector's offices.  The system was quite a good one but unlike TOPS it had no built in checks so could transmit rubbish if the input details were incorrect.

 

Inoutline yard A would send someone along a train to take wagon label details using a small tape recorder type machine am nd the telex/teleprinter operator would then prepare a punched tape using the information from the tape recorder (not all yards had anything as sophisticated as a tape recorder so it was a pencil and paper job for the lesser places.  The tape would then be fed into the machine which transmitted the train formation details to other yards where the train was booked to call along its line of route.  

 

at the receiving yards the machine would simply print out the details line by line each successive line corresponding to one wagon (rather like a TOPS Train List which enabled shunts to be planned before the train arrived which would usually save time.  An intermediate yard where the formation changed would then either send a revised list or, in some cases, simply send a message indicating what changes it had made to the formation.  The system worked quite well from what I saw of it when working in a marshalling yard in 1967 although you could get occasional errors in vehicle numbers although generally the route codes, in particular, tended to be accurate.  At Margam hump yard I understand that the ATI message was used to cut another punch tape which could work the points etc as the train was being humped.

 

The system remained in use on some parts of the WR until the arrival of TOP{S in 1974/75.

 

Hi Mike,

Your mention of ATI reminded me of a document I have that I have managed to dig out of my boxes. It is titled "Manual for the Re-formation of ATI Messages and the Introduction of Revised Codes" and dates from May 1973. The document was introduced as a guide for the changeover from ATI to TOPS. When I get a chance, I'll scan it and post on here, it may be of some interest.

[Mike Storey]

7 hours ago, C126 said:

Thanks as always for everyone's comments.  You will have guessed this is another technology that makes me envious at being born ten years too late.  Was there use of any teleprinters with the two-colour ribbons (red for incoming (RX) messages and black for out-going (TX))?  How did one tell which was which with one colour?

 

Not sure of other regions, but on the SR, "teleprinters" were just receivers - they were used at many locations to receive info from Controls using NTN. Only the Control users could input (maybe a few others, l am not sure, maybe some panel boxes and/or depots? But ATR, Automatic Train Reporting, was slowly coming in. Ian will know better). If you needed to get info back to Control, you rang them, often on single-key dedicated phones, and they would often be engaged or rang for a long time, especially during perturbation. By the time I eventually moved off the SR, TOPS and TRUST had largely taken over elsewhere for operational info, using PC's.

 

"Telex" machines were used for transmission and receipt. Of the only two I ever used of these, the messages were so rare (perhaps a dozen to fifteen a day), that the two colours they used were basically overkill. I am sure there will have been BR users who needed that, though where, I do not know.

[iands]

On 16/12/2021 at 12:52, iands said:

Hi Mike,

Your mention of ATI reminded me of a document I have that I have managed to dig out of my boxes. It is titled "Manual for the Re-formation of ATI Messages and the Introduction of Revised Codes" and dates from May 1973. The document was introduced as a guide for the changeover from ATI to TOPS. When I get a chance, I'll scan it and post on here, it may be of some interest.

Apologies for the delay in posting said "ATI Manual". After I had scanned all the pages, I realised, that since retiring, I no longer had access to a 'PDF editor' to combine it back into a single document. That matter has now been resolved, and attached is the manual below.

ATI Manual.pdf

 

Hope it is of interest.

[iands]

I also found a diagram of the NTN Network from the early 1980s. Apologies for the rather poor quality, but it is a "photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a fax" which passed for acceptable back in the 80s.

NTN Network.pdf

 

Again, hope it is of interest.

[SED Freightman]

On 16/12/2021 at 17:25, Mike Storey said:

 

Not sure of other regions, but on the SR, "teleprinters" were just receivers - they were used at many locations to receive info from Controls using NTN.

In the late 1970's at West Malling Telephone Enquiry Bureau there were three teleprinters, one connected to each Divisional Control, the name / make Creed as mentioned above by iands springs to mind. The machines were receive only and printed on reeled carbonated paper that had about six layers.  During times of serious disruption when all three machines could be printing at the same time the noise they produced was quite something.  At the same time, the Beckenham Control Office had Telex, TOPS and NTN terminals, I remember having to use the NTN machine for TOPS enquiries on occasions but it was much slower than the actual TOPS Terminal.  Not sure how much use the Telex machine received, but in the Freight Section we did get some telex messages relating to international traffic for train planning purposes and also information relating to exceptional load movements via the train ferry.