Test Station - What does it do?

[ramegoom]

$50 Craigslist find here. So now I'm wondering - What is it and how does it work? It's pretty much complete and in good condition, missing one knob, name plate and a captive screw on the front.

Anyone have information about it? I have a 551a switch board and am hoping I can rig it up to that, but seems it's some sort of test set.

[FABphones]

I've seen similar but not the same, I think it is a line tester from an exchange.

[Jim Stettler]

Some sort of tester.
I have a friend that buys things like this and wires them up as a telephone.
He does it for his own amusement
Jim S.

[RB]

Yeah, definitely a line tester.
to verify the current level of a selected circuit.
May have been the thing that identified an extra phone on the line,
when you could have only one phone. or pay for another. or if it was a coin circuit?
There is no way to signal that board, nor does it contain voice circuits...as far as I can tell.
and, it looks like it may have been installed as a permanent aid to a board system??
Too big of a wire bundle to be portable, imho.
Cool board anyway. nice find.
if you can find the main L1/L2 incoming lines, and power..., you could set that thing up to monitor your phone system.

[FABphones]

...So now I'm wondering - What is it and how does it work?...

Although as I mentioned above, I'm not familiar with that particular unit, I would say that is not a portable 'field' unit, it would have been used at the exchange. This is how I understand line testers to work...

In the exchange the engineer does a series of tests, the meter needle indicates if a fault is on the line or on the telephone. The switches on the unit would be used to help pinpoint and isolate the fault. How quickly or accurately the fault is found is often dependant on how well the engineer can read the needle. If the fault is on the line (not the telephone), no need to send out an engineer to the location of the phone itself, but a (for example 'poles / holes') field engineer may need to be sent out depending on the location/type of fault found.

Hope this helps a bit. 

ETA: Is there anything showing the voltage it would have used re its power supply?

[ramegoom]

It's interesting, no handset, but lots of test switches, and only one meter. The meter shows milliamps and volts in three different ranges. The trunk line is pretty large and there are some ordinary paired wires attached to solder points on the junction block. Seems there was a separate phone attached at one time.

The enclosure has a carrying handle, but also holes in the back indicating that it was possibly wall mounted. Tons of relays and capacitors inside, along with a rheostat (possibly for adjusting the input power) and a tiny little light bulb in a socket.

[skyrider]

$50 Craigslist find here. So now I'm wondering- What is it and how does it work?  Is pretty much complete and in good condition, missing one knob, name plate and a captive screw on the front.

I saw this type tester in central offices around east metro Atlanta. The frame and switch techs could test lines in the office. A good tech would make sure a line was leaving the office and that there was not any trouble in the field. Somewhere I have a dial from one of these, maybe a 5M IIRC.


Bill Compton