THE NIGHTWATCHMAN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22719, 4 November 1935, Page 12

THE NIGHTWATCHMAN

- A WELL-PAID JOB Nightwatchman —chief ' main superintendent of one of Southern England’s elec- • trie supply companies, . i . At .1 a.m. his bedside telephone brings i him on duty in a split second, writes Hoy Dexter in the Daily Mail. ' ' ■' ■ “ Number three feeder has- gone out! ’ a cheerful voice informs him. • » “ Wher«? ” “Palace Hill substation. Cable's broken down about 30 yards west of the station.” His quick brain not only visualises that . particular spot in the network of underground electrical mains but the best and' quickest'remedy-.- u; •. .= - * : “ Right! That cable’s about 3ft down — earthenware conduit —33,000 volt—some of Jiggers’s stuff.” He even names the makers of that piece of cable. “ Have a gang there, with a 50-yard drum of Jiggers’s 1 33,000 cable, and , a couple of jointers. We’ll cut the whole 30 yards out and put in a hew piece. Meet you there in half - . an hour. . . . Oh! How’s the loaddistributed? .... Half on No. 1 and a-quarter each 2 and 4? . . . Better take off the extra from 4, we’ll hav» that out next. Cheerio! ” . He hangs up the receiver and dives for his trousers. At the power station there is an orderly. ■ bustle. The night foreman sends out two men on bicycles to round up the digging gang. Men load acetylene flares, tools, ‘ earthenware conduit pipes, and cables jointers’ tents on to a lorry. Others carefully roll out a huge drum of cable to bis ~ hoisted on another lorry. ; Soon the gang appear in ones and twos v ond scramble on the tool lorry, which disappears into, the darkness, followed by , the cable-drum lorry and the assistant main superintendent in his little car. ' " The fIOOO-a-year chief is waiting for , ’ them at Palace Hill substation, having dressed and motored eight miles in less b than 20 minutes—incidentally, all the local police know him! [ His knowledge of the maze of. cables . ! , is such that he has already chalked out . the digging area, and is not an inch out when the workmen finally get down to tha cable. All that night, and until mid-day,' he - - waits while the old cable’is . cut and the new one jointed on. He inspects the joint.. carefully it is insulated, and after sw each layer of insulation—oiled paper, tape, - .v" lead, finally he sees the other end eonneoted to the substation switchgear,' andpei'sonally puts through a test.- . Then home, leaving his day-shift assistant to see everything cleared up. But’not to sleep—he must examine tha piece of r old cable and report oiy the probable cause of the trouble. Jiggers, the makers, - will want to know, and so will the station■ engineer, for either may have been at fault. - , As he completes his task and prepare* tor a bath and some sleep, the telephone rings again. “Number five overhead distribution main is out ’ at Swansdown! ” • riv' So he goes out to his car with another nights work before him. Although his assistants work regular shifts, he, as the ultimately responsible officer for the maintenance of a huge network of mains (something like 1000 miles of cable, both buried and overhead), has to be on the job all the while.