#xy switch

[commodorez]

So many ways to step!

[commodorez]

Stromberg Carlson XY Switch & Tester

I finally tried out my XY + XY tester to see how well each of them worked.  Turns out, both work very well.  It’s a surprisingly quick switching mechanism. 

It’s also loud as fuck. You want to piss off your neighbors with minimal effort?  just set this thing into a test loop and leave it running.

[commodorez]

If you’re like me, you own a Stromberg-Carlson XY switch from a mechanical telephone exchange.  Well, what if you want to properly test your XY switch?  Stromberg-Carlson had you covered: they made self contained portable test set!  Just slide the XY switch into place, attach the XY’s connector to the socket, and give it 48V to power it.

Too bad the switch I wanted to test was moved into storage last week...

[commodorez]

Closeup of a Stromberg-Carlson XY telephone switch. 

[commodorez]

Using a Western Electric 52A switch to increment a Stromberg-Carlson XY mechanical telephone switch.

[commodorez]

Seems I’ve amassed a decent collection of mechanical telephone switches.  Stromberg-Carlson, Automatic Electric, and C.P. Clare & Co are all represented here.  Now I just need a Western Electric type switch.  Too bad their first generation mechanical switches known as Panel switches are very large, and tend to be integrated as large units rather than modules.

Maybe I should get a complete rotary phone next...

[commodorez]

I bought another step-by-step style telephone switch on ebay...

This time, it’s a Stromberg-Carlson XY switch, which seems to be in excellent condition.  I just need to get my hands on the appropriate contact bank for the XY gantry to step through to turn this into a functional piece of equipment again.

I wonder how hard it would be to get a real Strowger SxS switch to play with.