Siemens Brothers British Phone

[HobieSport]

I "won" this phone today and know nothing about it.  It's my first British phone.  It may be a Siemens Brothers 356 or close to that. Embossed in the handset is "SIEMENS BROTHERS LONDON PAT...9/30"

I found a site about Siemens Brothers phones here:
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/freshwater/siemensb/telelist.htm

The site has a note mentioning that "The Siemens 350 and 356 are directly equivalent to the BPO 332 and the similarity of its number to BPO telephones in the 300 series can cause confusion."

It does have some damage; The tip of an ear is gone, and there's a small chip in the front tray, and one on the spit cup.  But it was cheap and I'll love it anyway. I don't know if I'll be able to get it to work and ring on US lines, but I'll enjoy trying.

Stephen and/or Contraste, any insights concerning this phone would be much appreciated.

[mienaichizu]

that's nice matt, it kinda indentical to the BPO telephones

[contraste]

Sorry, I can't help with this one.

[Stephen Furley]

It doesn't seem to be a GPO telephone, these always carried GPO markings,but I don't know if the GPO bought any of their telephones from Siemens; the 300 type were certainly made by several different companies.  It's a bit odd that there's no marking as to its ownership; it could have come from a private system, government, railway etc.  or from a non-British public system, but I would expect any of these to have put some sort of marking on it.  If you remove the metal baseplate is there any marking inside?

It has the raised area on the base to accept a drawer; not all of these telephones had this, but even on those that had it a drawer was not always fitted.  This seems to be the case here, that looks like a blanking plate at the front, not a drawer with the knob missing.

[McHeath]

These phones look really large in pictures, are they?  It should be a cool addition to the phone phamily. 

[HobieSport]

Heath I don't guess that this Siemens  Brothers phone is necessarily any larger than than a standard WE 302, but it is still in shipping transit so I won't know until I actually pick it up and weigh it.

Stephen is there any possibility that small telephone manufacturers in the late 1930s in England worked in their basements or garages to manufacture some extra telephones for the BPO?

This is also the first phone that I ever acquired that has an actual slightly chipped spit cup.

I remain somewhat confused.

[gpo706]

It looks like a GPO 332 made under licence by Siemens.

The baseplate has the standard extrusion for a number drawer, as far as I know standard, but yours has a blanking plate on the front, without the pull out knob or tray.

This isn't unusual, the base plate was designed for the tray, but those not so fitted with such just had a blanking plate affixed to the front of the casing.

You could easily fit a tray to it by scouring ebay UK for one and getting the tray parts and a tray plate and pull knob (cough!) if you get me.

BTW the GPO licensed hundreds (well maybe about under 70-ish) of manufacturers to clone their designs, in the UK and overseas, my lovely 312L saved from bin for £50, was made in Portugal to GPO specs.

[gpo706]

Hobiedude:

There more than a hundred it looks like, sorry!

http://telephonesuk.co.uk/ident_codes.htm

http://www.britishtelephones.com/homepag1.htm

http://www.britishtelephones.com/manucode.htm

Whats the codes on it?

Scot