NEW RAILWAY STATION

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29368, 22 November 1960, Page 16

NEW RAILWAY STATION

Communications T ransf erred

After a busy week-end nearly all local administration branches of the Railways Department are installed in the new Christchurch railway station. Last week clerks temporarily turned "removal ’men” in order to help shift furniture, files. ai)d office equipment into the new quarters. At the week-end the communications system was transferred to the new station. As expected there were a few faults, but by yesterday the new equipment was working smoothly. There are two telephone systems—one completely automatic for calls within the department and the other operated by three or four girls for answering public calls. Another two switchboards are used exclusively for inquiries. Within arms’ reach of operators are filing cabinets containing timetables, fares, and other details of trains running in New Zealand.

The automatic exchange accounts for all inter-departmental calls within a large area surrounding Christchurch. There are 17 of these areas or zones in New Zealand. To call a branch or station in another area requires dialling the station telephone operator who completes the link on the switchboard. To the untrained eye the automatic exchange is a mass of crisscrossed wires, flashing lights, and rattling selecting mechanisms The equipment is the same as that used by the Post and Telegraph Department, with some modifications. The new switchboards are a vast improvement on the old There are no cords and plugs Ooerators. comfortable on swive’ chairs in a sunny sound-proof room now dial numbers by pushing coloured buttons set out in a simnle pattern on panels. The train control radiotelephone system was also onerating from sunny modern ' offices in the new station yesterday. The operators who record and control the progress of each train now sit at sloping semi-circular desks with amplifiers and microphones inset in a panel in front.