Do It Yourself" Maintenance
Page 57
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VOUR leading article (May 8) on the provision of 1. maintenance facilities for. the -smaller Operator is timely. The primary consideration is to make repairs speedily, so that the wheels-, whichearn money-, arestopped for the hortest • . . Night shifts' help:', Mobile service vans which call at customers' premises also offer scope for. possible development. There would, however, appear to be heavy calls at certain periods during the day, particularly in the evening, and correspondingly long spells of inactivity.
A Southend garage proprietor recently decided to make his service 'equipment available.during the week-ends and evenings for Private'mateirists to do their-own maintenance. There is a: nominal 'charge for this facility, and oils and materials are charged extra. A qualified mechanic is available to supervise work. Already there is a long waiting list of customers. I wonder whether this idea will spread.
Sotithend-onSea. TRUNKFE.
G.P.O. Mobile Automatic Exchanges
\1/OUR readers who saw the paragraph about mobile 1 telephone exchanges in the United States under " Passing Comments" in The Commercial Motor dated March 27, may be interested to know that they have been used by the British Post Office for many years. The speedy
restoration of service in the event of flood,' fire or other disaster is their main function, but they are also used, as a routine measure, to take over service temporarily when .a small automatic exchange building has to be replaced by larger one .
Another -common use is to provide telephone service where an urgent stalling problem arises at a small manual exchange _(perhaps by the death of a sub-postmaster). The Post Office at present has, distributed throughout the country, over 40 mobile automatic exchange trailers, which can be hauled by any Post Office vehicle capable of handling loads of between 6 and 8 tons. They have a capacity of 100 or 200 lines, according to type.
Circumstances are obviously very different here from in the United States,and we have not used the mobile exchanges to give relief to the order lists. We believe that permanent exchanges are cheaper and very nearly as quick, using the prefabricated wooden buildings that we have developed for smaller automatic exchanges of up to 600 lines. In this country a "new town" usually develops close 'to an existing town with an exchange which can provide for the essential needs while the existing exchange is being enlarged or a new one built.
St. Martin's-le-Grand, T. A. O'BRIEN,
London, E.C.L Public Relations Officer, General Post Office.