Two things to add:

One phone number in the 1964 PRR timetable as a "YL n-nnnn". The
phone company was experimenting was using two meaningless letters as
way to expand dialable codes; such as in Buffalo. This didn't catch
on, and they went to ANC instead.

Also, railroads and pipelines were two exempted businesses that Bell
would allow to own and maintain Bell telephone equipment due to the
difficulty of maintaining wayside equipment. The PRR owned a separate
long distance network, complete with toll testboards.

Some smaller railroads retained magneto local battery phones into the
1980s. They of course required periodic visits to replace the
batteries (No. 6 dry cells*), but the cells were designed for
intermittent use and lasted a long time (geez, today with alakaline
they could go many years).

*Do they still make No. 6 dry cells?



On Apr 7, 2:12*pm, wrote:
On Apr 7, 1:17*am, spsffan wrote:

Just out of curiosity, do you have any opinion regarding the service
and equipment quality of GTE/Automatic Electric vs. the Bell System/
Western Electric?
Having lived in GTE territory most of my life, with a couple of years in
Ma Bell territory in between, I'd say that the phones themselves were
equal.

Service was another thing all together. Things got so bad in the late
1970s that the city of Santa Monica considered giving GTE the boot in
favor of Pacific Bell. Admittedly, there was always a dial tone, but
noise on the lines was horrible, and getting any kind of service problem
taken care of was very slow.

Thanks for your comments.

Returning to rail for a moment, many railroads, streetcar lines, and
other industrial entities have AE built PAX--private automatic
exchange. *I think Bell was forbidden to sell such equipment except to
the military as a result of the 1950s consent decree. *Anyway, it was
common in railroad offices to see two telephones on a manager's desk--
A Bell set and an AE set (like an AE 40 which has a distinctive
look). *Some of those private networks were large with thousands of
stations (eg corner call boxes of a big city police department or
transit carrier).

GTE was the largest of the Independents. *In the 1970s many
Independent carriers had service problems like you describe. *The
Independents tended to be old step-by-step equipment because that was
most economical for the smaller exchanges of Independent territory and
it was a relatively simple design. *But SxS needs extensive
maintainence to work reliably and keep the noise down. *As equipment
aged or there was new population growth, many of the Independents did
not have the needed capital to properly upgrade their plant.

Another problem of the Independents was a lack of economies of scale.
Even a large carrier like GTE or United might only have only one
exchange in a region, the neighbors being Bell or a different
Independent. *In the 1980s there was an overdue effort to swap
exchanges to build contiguous service areas. *Also, building a pole
line or digging a conduit is expensive, and in Bell areas the cost
tended to be spread over many more customers.

Ironically, once ESS came down in price in the later 1980s the
Independents rushed to buy them, and in some cases were more up to
date than small town Bell exchanges. *One small town exchange manager
told me that ESS eliminated the need to expand the C.O. building and
was a big saving on maintenance costs. *A lot more can be done
remotely with an ESS community dial office than a SxS one, a big
saving since sending a man out to a remote CDO was expensive.