Grid Bygones -- Contact Us
This is the Team. We are ex CEGB/NGC employees with an interest in preserving peoples recollections and information about EVERYTHING from the inception of the CEB until the current day.
If you have anything you wish to contribute please contact one of us and we will add your information to the Website.
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About Us
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| Mick joined the Post Office (Telephones), North Central Area, London, in 1965 as an apprentice. Then in 1972 Mick joined the CEGB at the St Albans (Redbourn) Grid Control Centre, in the Telecoms Section. He was surprised to see that most of the equipment in the apparatus rooms was mounted on PO type racks to PO equipment practice. He then variously worked in SE Regional Telecoms (North), National Control (Park Street) then Five Centre Grid Control Project at Wokingham. He had responsibility for the fitting out and commissioning of NCC Wokingham and later his team expanded to also include responsibility for Birmingham and Leeds. After project completion he had roles in Powercom and also Gridcom where he was Project Manager for delivery of the Operational Telecoms site-works contract to Energis. He resigned in 1999 when an opportunity to return to "real" telecoms arose. The role was Operations Manager with Metro Services Division of Global One, the international arm of France Telecom. Mick then became Head of Operations and Engineering and finally Divisional Manager for the closure of the Division and the integration of its products and services into the main business. FT around this time acquired Orange, and Global One became Orange Business Services. He retired in 2007 as a Projects Director after migrating the Orange Business Services voice customers and the FT global voice network from ageing digital voice switches to an IP based switch network.
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Dave Gunning was born in Cheshire in late September 1939 as part of the war effort, the son of Percy Gunning who, so rumour
had it, was fabricated from genuine "Strowger" parts by the Automatic Telephone Manufacturing Company (ATM) of Liverpool. Father
was then the Telecommunications Engineer for the North West England, Merseyside and North Wales combined Districts of the Central
Electricity Board which was controlled from the CIS in East Didsbury, to the south of Manchester. Wartime restrictions on domestic
car use disallowed family outings but, fortuitously due to fuel rations for his essential duties, it was possible to accompany him
on his many journeys to attend to remote indicating equipment, albeit confined to "relaxation" in areas within Grid sites or in power
station parking places. Dave's memories from around 4 years of age recall occasions when he would be taken into substation equipment
rooms and, on Saturday mornings, to the CIS called "Grid House". His father's job even pervaded the family home. There were the
midnight telephone calls from his colleagues on call-out and in difficulty at remote locations. Blueprints would cover the
matrimonial bed whilst poor Mother tried to sleep. Also remembered were the relay groups being modified on the kitchen table, with
the introduction to that unforgettable odour of hot solder, sometimes rather too near to approaching meal times. There were those
sacred periods when disturbance was forbidden as pencilled drawings and consequential rubber dust were spread in all directions.
Site visits stopped abruptly when the family moved south and Percy Gunning became the BEA's Telecommunications Engineer in 1948
although the silences, drawings and rubber dust did multiply hugely as he designed his new Standardised System, the "GI". Of those
sacred drawings, very few survive but are regarded by those still possessing them as beyond price.
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