WE Payphone problem - help needed.

[RotarDad]

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving!  I have a WE 233G which has been converted to 236G configuration (internal network,  ringer and upper housing plug connector).  It has been working great since I installed it a few months ago.

The issue relates to re-installing the upper housing.  I connect the plug and place the housing into position.  The phone works and all is good until I push the housing that last 1/16" into place and then I hear the coin chute electromagnet operate and my earpiece volume (both dialtone and voice) drop to nearly zero.  If I move the upper housing upward or outward that 1/16", all is good again.  I've double-checked everything several times to no avail.  Any thoughts?  Thank you!!

Paul

[GG]

If it's one with a strip of spring contacts on the right side of the backplane, check that none of the contacts is touching the backplane when the housing is put in place.  One quick & dirty way to to that is:

Put a strip of masking tape on the metal backplane behind the contacts; don't press the masking tape into place.  Do likewise at the rear edge of the front housing, behind the spike-shaped contacts that are mounted inside the housing.  Put the upper housing back on and see if the problem continues.  Then remove the upper housing again and look at the places where your masking tape is: look for evidence of the tape being pressed down or marked or scratched in one area in contrast to the rest of it.

If that's not it, then look for anything in the front housing that could be making contact with any of the components in the coin relay when the housing is on the phone.

Lastly, check the "2 nickels" mechanism in the front housing.  Drop one nickel in and see that it operates and latches; drop another in and see that it restores to normal. 

If nothing else works and the phone isn't intended to be connected to a coin trunk simulator but only to work as a normal extension, disconnect the wires to the coin relay, and insulate & store (tape up) the spade lugs at the free ends of the wires so they don't short to something else. 

[RotarDad]

GG,

Wow - that was it!   I had completely ignored the "pile up" contacts on the backplate since they aren't used anymore with the 236G connector.  I taped them off carefully and that fixed it!   Now that I think about it, I've seen other 236Gs on Ebay and they have some black insulating  stuff (dipped maybe?) over these contacts.  Now I know why.   Thank you so much!!

One other question if I may.  I am in the process of installing a coin hopper relay and my dad is building a controller for it.  The cool thing is the relay has the dial shorting contacts so a coin will be required.  My issue is the nickel functionality.  If the phone is "hung up", then the nickel latch seems to work fine:  one nickel is held and the 2nd nickel releases both of them into the hopper.  However if you lift the receiver, you hear the chute electromagnet operate, but now nickel 1 falls directly into the hopper which will allow a call.  Shouldn't the nickel latch operate to require 2 nickels with the receiver lifted??  Thanks again for your help!!

Paul

[GG]

Hi Paul- What's happening with your nickel latch is probably that line current is being passed through to the relay that controls it, thereby keeping it in the unlatched position that would occur when you dial Operator for a long distance call and can deposit single nickels as part of the toll (e.g. "please deposit 55 cents...")

That may be a function of line polarity: try reversing the line polarity altogether and see if it still happens.  If that stops it, then you may find it possible or useful to selectively reverse polarity of the wires that are associated with the nickel relay.

[RotarDad]

GG,

Thanks for the ideas.  I tried reversing the green & red line wires without any change.  I think you are right about the electromagnet being triggered by line voltage in a way that Ma Bell didn't intend.  In looking at a Coin Collector BSP, it says that pre-pay electromagnets were non-polarized, so there may not be a way to fix this.  Since the electromagnet was used specifically to allow extra toll paid with nickels, this is not a feature I really need.  I may just disconnect it.

I did find something else in my BSP reading.  The switchhook is also supposed to control that latch gate such that a nickel will fall through (be returned) if the switchhook is down, but allow the "1st nickel hold, 2nd nickel drops both" operation when the switchhook is lifted.  Mine did not work like this.  I found that my switchhook was missing a copper colored sheet metal extention that operates the gate in the coin chute.  Fortunately I had another switchhook with this piece bent up, but intact.  Once I get it straightened out, I will install and hopefully have a more authentic payphone. (I found a nice Ebay pic which shows that copper extention below, although the chrome handset holder is shown 180 degrees from its proper position)

Thanks again for your help!  Any other thoughts you may have would be appreciated.   Paul

[Phonesrfun]

The copper piece is often bent and sometimes broken off due to improper and careless replacement of the upper housing on the body.  I don't remember which, so my advice is no good, but you either have to be sure that the phone is off hook or on hook before replacing the upper housing, other wise it snags and bends that copper tab.

[RotarDad]

I have gotten some additional information from "Gray-Western" on Ebay who sells nice refurbished 3-slot payphones and authentic controllers.  He told me that the 50s-60s WE payphones were set up to require a coin(s) in the hopper before dial tone was provided.  The relay trigger closes a switch to the relay contacts 3 and 4(g) which sends a signal to the main office.  Then dial tone was provided.  The provision of dial tone also activates the electromagnet in the coin chute which will allow single nickel additional toll to be paid.  Prior to a coin(s) falling into the hopper, the electromagnet will not be powered and the nickel latch will work properly to pay your initial toll.  Also the dial short (contacts 1 and 2) on the relay is a backup to prevent fraud (apparently there were sneaky ways to get dial tone without a coin and the dial short prevented a call).  This is more complicated that I thought!  The controller Gray-Western sells is designed to operate the relay in a realistic manner - taking into account all these details.  Thanks for everyone's help on this!!   Paul

[GG]

Quick explanation of payphones and payphone lines generally: 

1) There were three systems for payphones in the US: pre-pay, post-pay, and semi-prepay. 

a) Pre-pay:  (Mostly WE and Bell operating companies.)  Off hook, deposit coin(s), receive dial tone, dial the number.  This system used "ground-start" trunks where grounding one side of the line briefly is what gets you dial tone.  It was susceptible to toll fraud by e.g. inserting an un-bent paper clip into the transmitter to contact the metal transmitter housing (WE T2 transmitters for payphones) and touching the other end of the paper clip to ground.  Thus telcos had to introduce further complications into the payphones to block dialing unless a coin had actually entered the mechanism.  The other problem with pre-pay was that you couldn't call Operator or emergency numbers without inserting a coin: very bad if you've just gotten robbed and are trying to call the police. 

b) Post-pay:  (Mostly AE and independent telcos.)  Off hook, receive dial tone, dial the number.  Called party answers, line polarity reverses, tripping a relay in the phone to short the transmitter and partially short the receiver.  Insert coin to release relay and enable transmitter and receiver.  No ground-start line needed.  Works with standard Strowger switches that reverse calling party's line polarity when called party answers.  Not susceptible to "paper clip" toll fraud.  Enabled dialing Operator or emergency numbers without a coin.  The problem with post-pay was that the called party couldn't hear you until your coin went through the phone, so if you were slow and they were impatient, they might hang up as your coin is passing through the mechanism, so you'd lose your coin.  However, in areas where post-pay was common, people knew enough to not hang up prematurely if they couldn't hear a caller immediately.

c) Semi-prepay:  Off hook, receive dial tone, and then either: dial Operator or emergency number without need of coin (solves the public safety issue for emergency calls without coins); or, insert coin and dial any other local call.  Frankly I'm not certain about the setup of the line for this because it would have to differentiate free calls vs. pre-paid calls. 

2)  Overseas telephone administrations (e.g. GPO, various PTTs) tended to use two systems: 

a)  Post-pay, known in the UK as "Pay On Answer" or POA.  Basically similar to US version except that when called party answered, calling party would hear "pay tones" aka "rapid pips" as the signal to insert coins.  Called party would also hear the rapid pips and know to not hang up because they would shortly hear the caller on the line as soon as the coin(s) went through. 

b)  Metered calling, using the same "metering pulses" that could be used to operate a subscriber's meter, that looked like an odometer and showed call charges in real time.  In this case, the phone is basically semi-prepay and you can insert as much money as you like: the meter pulses will cause the phone to eat the coins one at a time, and when you hang up, the un-collected coins are returned.  Germany, Switzerland, and a few other places had a clever version of this where you could see the coin track through a thick perspex window in the phone, so you could watch your coins getting eaten and insert more coins proactively to keep adding time. 

c)  Early GPO, "button A/B phones," where the coin collecting box (separate from the phone, typically a 232 was used) had two buttons: collect and return.  This was basically a pre-pay system, with manual coin control instead of a high-voltage relay.  If the called party answered, you'd press a button to collect the coin and enable the transmitter.  If line busy or no answer, press the other button to return the coin.

3)  One more interesting variant:

When I was a little kid, I once vacationed in a place with a tiny rural telco, where the public phones were normal AE 90s and Starlite wall sets, mounted in booths (and occasionally on walls in public places, with a sign above them).  Local calls were free, long distance calls were always made via Operator and billed collect, credit-card, or third-party.  I loved this idea: not just because local calls were free, but because it basically said that people in the area could be trusted to not vandalize these unprotected, un-armored, vulnerable public phones.

Have I missed any?

Anyone know more about semi-prepay in the US?

[RotarDad]

Thanks for the additional info!  On the semi-prepay, here is a poor quality pic of my instruction card, which is dated '71.  It says to "Listen for Dial Tone - Deposit 10c - Then Dial" which matches your description.  It also lists 3 numbers that don't require a coin: 411, 611, and 0.  They must have had some automated equipment by '71 to discriminate based on number dialed?

[GG]

Semi-prepay.  Or the correct term might be semi-postpay. 

Determining free call status would have been done at the CO, and fairly easily. 

Presumably if you dialed 0 and requested fire or police, the operator would put you through regardless of whether you had a dime.

10-cent payphone calls.  How far we've fallen since then...

[Wallphone]

They must have had some automated equipment by '71 to discriminate based on number dialed?

"Operator" is the only phone number that starts with 0 (zero) and no other seven digit numbers start with 411 or 611 so it was easy to route those three digit numbers.
Doug Pav