[GreenKeys] AT&T Norway, Illinois

[Jim Harvey]

Don Robert House wrote:
> 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.

Sometime in the late 70s' I was sent to Ames Iowa to attend a 5 week
Bell System course on Economics. One of the classmates was a long lines
person, he arranged a tour of a similar bomb proof facility somewhere in
Iowa. I don't know exactly where but it was not a long drive from Ames.
Don't recall any microwave, at that time all the facilities were L
carrier on coax buried deep enough that it was considered atom bomb
resistant.  The  building had five floors, all underground. All bays,
carrier and switch, were suspended by springs floor and ceiling.  Even
the Urinals were hooked up with rubber hoses.
-- 
    Jim Harvey, Naperville, Ill.   Linux person - WB8NBS/9
           He who dies with the most software wins.