[GreenKeys] AT&T Norway, Illinois

[Don Robert House]

Many thanks to Ben Stephans for this look back into our history...


On 10 Jan 2009, at 10:05 AM, K9kom at aol.com wrote:

Hi Don,

I think that was the AT&T hardened site I visited many years ago.  I  
would have been part of the Autovon system, which had four major 4- 
wire switching centers with redundant trunks to the others.  Each  
phone or data station homed on two central offices, so that if one got  
nuked out, they would still have dial tone to whatever was left.  It  
was a brilliant piece of engineering.

Finding the location was easy, thanks to the huge microwave tower.   
There were only two unimpressive metal buildings, one being a garage.   
I was told to go into the other one and then go down the stairs.  What  
I found was really impressive.

The first floor down from ground level was filled with air filters and  
blowers, to filter out the radioactive dust from a nearby nuclear  
blast if the facility survived.  I went through two huge blast doors,  
at least a foot thick, which were so heavy that motors had to open and  
then close them behind me.

The second floor down was for the carrier equipment.  There were racks  
and racks of channel banks and their support equipment.  The third  
floor held the switching equipment, and the fourth down was the  
control center with people at control consoles.  The fifth floor had  
meeting rooms and repair shops, while the final, sixth, floor had  
living quarters, kitchens and dining rooms.

The Cold War having ended, there were few people there, and the  
original switching equipment, which had been crossbar, was replaced  
with much smaller 5ESS vintage solid state switches.  I suspect that  
these switching centers are now nodes on fiber optic networks, and the  
microwave towers have not been used for years.   But any time you see  
one of those huge towers, remember that it is sort of like an iceberg  
-- there is at least as much stuff below ground level as there is above.

73,

C. Bennett (Ben) Stephens
Interline Telecom Service Corp.
Lake Forest, Illinois