DAMAGE TO TOLL CABLE

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29390, 17 December 1960, Page 14

DAMAGE TO TOLL CABLE

Permanent Repair By Today

(New Zealand Press Association) ' WELLINGTON, December 16. Permanent repairs on the torn Auckland-Wellington coaxial telephone toll cable should be completed early tomorrow morning, a General Post Office official said today. Repair gangs would be putting replacement cable in throughout the night. Post Office engineers last night found that 100 yards of cable, valued at £1 a foot, had been badly strained and would have to be replaced. A Manawatu Catchment Board dragline fouled the cable just before 3 p.m. yesterday when digging a drain under a . trestle bridge near Palmerston North.

Emergency repair gangs raced from Palmerston North as toll calls began to pile up in Auckland and Wellington. The circuits were not cleared until 9 p.m. The repair gang had a temporary splice within four hours. The Post Office spokesman said it was not yet known how much the break, the first since the microwave toll link opened on November 8, would cost. “But the body responsible will be charged with the repairs,” he said. Under the Post Office Act, damage to telephone lines either wilfully or by negligence carried a maximum fine of £3OO. He did not know if there would be a prosecution because of yesterday’s break. The spokesman said the cable was signposted every 300 yards, with notices giving the depth at which the cable was buried. All Post Offices and local authorities along the cable route had been given detailed maps of the line.