red phone boxes

bramley13 · Post by **bramley13** » Wed 23 Jan, 2008 7:37 pm

there was an old red phone box on the corner of horsforth roundabout,the car broke down so i decided to get a bus to work to yeadon, ok getting there. but on way home i decided to get a taxi from horsforth to bramley,got off bus at ring road,no box its gone,m over road near burger king,phone box,great taxi here i go, didnt work,been vandalised.no probs fleece next one,quick pint phone call,no phone been taken out.2 pints later,new road side ,tescos didnt work.one left horsforth hotel,that must work,nope out of order.,last one corner of newlay lane thats gotta work.nope chewing gum in it.ended up flagging a black and white home lol.why didnt i take the mobile?it was in the car lol.we never used to have mobiles, so take time to think,we need a phone booth sometime

Bramley4woods · Post by **Bramley4woods** » Thu 24 Jan, 2008 6:58 pm

bramley13 wrote: there was an old red phone box on the corner of horsforth roundabout,the car broke down so i decided to get a bus to work to yeadon, ok getting there. but on way home i decided to get a taxi from horsforth to bramley,got off bus at ring road,no box its gone,m over road near burger king,phone box,great taxi here i go, didnt work,been vandalised.no probs fleece next one,quick pint phone call,no phone been taken out.2 pints later,new road side ,tescos didnt work.one left horsforth hotel,that must work,nope out of order.,last one corner of newlay lane thats gotta work.nope chewing gum in it.ended up flagging a black and white home lol.why didnt i take the mobile?it was in the car lol.we never used to have mobiles, so take time to think,we need a phone booth sometime Vandalism aside they couldn't compete with mobile phones. I recently bought an Orange PAYG one from Sainbury's, a very basic LG one for £5.95 inc £1.00 call credit. For the firm so got the VAT of 88p back! New battery, charger, earphones, the lot. Rates much cheaper than payphones as well. It used to cost BT an absolute fortune to have engineers drive out to collect the money, repair and clean them.Every single pay-on-answer payphone used to have a whole rack of mechanical equipment at the exchange controlling the timing and charging of calls, the "Coin and Fee Relay Set". It was rumoured that there was only one man in BT who understood how it worked and he was the one who designed it. Also to repair them when they got vandalised to get at the money and when people soiled them, as they frequently did.They used to be subsidised by the revenue from fixed landlines but OFTEL stopped them cross-subsidising when de-regulation and competition came in.As an aside anyone remember that BT yard on Mushroom Street (at the side of Renault / Porcellanosa on Regent Street in the mid '60s ? It contained "Hundreds (?)" of red telephone boxes which went for scrap.They'd be worth a fortune now, sold to the Americans on EBAY !

bramley13 · Post by **bramley13** » Sat 26 Jan, 2008 8:22 am

2p a call, phone books well kept,allways worked,and some had a mirror.wouldnt happen now.i knew a guy jack gilpin hes long gone.he had the contact in horsforth yeadon rawdon.he cleaned them ,and painted them twice a year.not a bad job

Trojan · Post by **Trojan** » Sat 26 Jan, 2008 4:48 pm

In the eighties just after BT had been privatised you'd a job to find one that worked.In the days just before mobile phones became available (I had one of the first - it was like a brick!) I had a pager. It was December and I was in Bradford in the fog. The pager went off meaning ring the office. It took me 40 minutes in the fog and about five attempts to find one that was working. I eventually get through to be told "it doesn't matter we've sorted it out now!"

Bramley4woods · Post by **Bramley4woods** » Sat 26 Jan, 2008 5:05 pm

Trojan wrote: In the eighties just after BT had been privatised you'd a job to find one that worked.In the days just before mobile phones became available (I had one of the first - it was like a brick!) I had a pager. It was December and I was in Bradford in the fog. The pager went off meaning ring the office. It took me 40 minutes in the fog and about five attempts to find one that was working. I eventually get through to be told "it doesn't matter we've sorted it out now!" Hmmm, Pagers.Once when BT was on strike the payphones stopped working because they had stopped emptying the cash boxes and they were all full of money.Carrying a pager, once during this period I got paged 22 times in 3 hours driving from Leeds to London but could not respond because every single payphone at every single service station on the M1 was out of service.And people wonder how it came about that the country has gone to hell in a handbasket.

Brandy · Post by **Brandy** » Sat 26 Jan, 2008 5:39 pm

Bramley4woods wrote: bramley13 wrote: there was an old red phone box on the corner of horsforth roundabout,the car broke down so i decided to get a bus to work to yeadon, ok getting there. but on way home i decided to get a taxi from horsforth to bramley,got off bus at ring road,no box its gone,m over road near burger king,phone box,great taxi here i go, didnt work,been vandalised.no probs fleece next one,quick pint phone call,no phone been taken out.2 pints later,new road side ,tescos didnt work.one left horsforth hotel,that must work,nope out of order.,last one corner of newlay lane thats gotta work.nope chewing gum in it.ended up flagging a black and white home lol.why didnt i take the mobile?it was in the car lol.we never used to have mobiles, so take time to think,we need a phone booth sometime Vandalism aside they couldn't compete with mobile phones. I recently bought an Orange PAYG one from Sainbury's, a very basic LG one for £5.95 inc £1.00 call credit. For the firm so got the VAT of 88p back! New battery, charger, earphones, the lot. Rates much cheaper than payphones as well. It used to cost BT an absolute fortune to have engineers drive out to collect the money, repair and clean them.Every single pay-on-answer payphone used to have a whole rack of mechanical equipment at the exchange controlling the timing and charging of calls, the "Coin and Fee Relay Set". It was rumoured that there was only one man in BT who understood how it worked and he was the one who designed it. Also to repair them when they got vandalised to get at the money and when people soiled them, as they frequently did.They used to be subsidised by the revenue from fixed landlines but OFTEL stopped them cross-subsidising when de-regulation and competition came in.As an aside anyone remember that BT yard on Mushroom Street (at the side of Renault / Porcellanosa on Regent Street in the mid '60s ? It contained "Hundreds (?)" of red telephone boxes which went for scrap.They'd be worth a fortune now, sold to the Americans on EBAY ! yes i remember all them boxes on dolly lane i wonder what happend to em all?i remember on dragons den they was a joiner guy who had come up with the idea of making wooden replicas of red boxes for prople to put in there garden or to use as shower cubicles !! he got laughed out of the den by the dragons for some reason

Chrism · Post by **Chrism** » Sun 27 Jan, 2008 3:00 pm

There used to be a red phone box in The Warehouse night club, it was used as ... ... ... ... ... a phone box!

rangieowner · Post by **rangieowner** » Sun 29 Mar, 2009 5:46 pm

Horsforth Town Street outside The Old Kings Arms pub is still there and then there is this one in Great Preston!!

Trojan · Post by **Trojan** » Sun 29 Mar, 2009 6:09 pm

rangieowner wrote: Horsforth Town Street outside The Old Kings Arms pub is still there and then there is this one in Great Preston!! There used to be a quiz show on telly called 64000 Question, which featured a soundproof box, I remember as kids pretending to be playing the game and using the phone boxes as the soundproof box.

raveydavey · Post by **raveydavey** » Sun 29 Mar, 2009 6:15 pm

Bramley4woods wrote: As an aside anyone remember that BT yard on Mushroom Street (at the side of Renault / Porcellanosa on Regent Street in the mid '60s ? It contained "Hundreds (?)" of red telephone boxes which went for scrap.They'd be worth a fortune now, sold to the Americans on EBAY ! I remember that yard - a schoolfriends dad used to work for BT so occasionally he'd need to nip in and collect something from there and take us along with him for the ride - although that probably isn't allowed nowadays either.If I remember correctly, when that depot closed they all moved up to new premises on Coal Road at Seacroft. I'd guess that the red phone boxes had been disposed of by then though