[GreenKeys] Re: Telephone cable

[jhhaynes at earthlink.net]

I once had a summer job, back in 1956 I think it was, with Southwestern
Bell laying a PVC insulated toll cable.  It was quite a rush job, so
I did quite well financially with the 7 days a week work and overtime.
The next summer they were digging it back up, as it had become known
as the Little Rock to Texarkana Water Hose.

One problem was that the contractor digging the ditch and burying
the cable kept knocking holes in it.  We splicers would have to
go and repair those, using a lead sleeve and various combinations
of rubber and other stuff to attach the sleeve to the cable sheath.
The supervisor on the job got pretty mad about all the repairs and
told the contractor if things didn't improve he was going to start
charging them when we had to repair a hole.  I suspect at that point
they simply quit telling anyone when they had made a hole and buried
the cable anyway.

Then there was a general feeling on the job that this was a plastic
insulated cable, so even if water got inside it wouldn't hurt anything.
What people didn't realize is that, unlike paper insulated cable, any
water getting into a PVC cable can run through it for miles, eventually
getting into a load splice and the loading coils were not waterproof.
No doubt this is the reason for the later development of a cable filled
with silicone grease, leaving no free space through which water can
flow.  I guess they should have planned to pressurize the cable to
keep water out; and maybe that's what they did the following year.
We pressure tested most of the splices for leaks.