The Guardian-1.mpg 

Wow no way would I enjoyed that experience it was scary enough fully lit when alone with no one else down there.

That's a very vivid account, thank you. I hadn't considered the challenges of putting out the fire.

Same as.

Me also

me to

@Andrew Dyndor You made me think. The voice in the first 30 seconds also really similar. But you have to think this was filmed 24 years ago.

@ Andrew Dyndor. No Martin had nothing to do with the recording it was just us two engineers who worked above in the BT exchange and decided to record before it was decommissioned and ripped out. Recorded 1994. Yes were Mancs thought ;-)

Glad you enjoyed it. We recorded this around 1994 while working above in the telephone exchange building thinking that it would be cool to take a recording for history. However not being a professional camera man and there being little or no editing software in the early 90's and computer editing was in its infancy or not even practical :-) you will have to bear with our limited ability. After all this was originally not intended to be shown to anyone but just as a curiosity for personal use. However I decided to make public for the historical record :-) Sorry for the bad quality but this was recorded on a Sony 1992 analogue Super8 device but better than nothing I hope. Big Rabbit

Thanks, Captain Heindsight.

I used to work in Guardian and walk the tunnels. The lift shaft was on York St and another tunnel ended up in a private car park. Its fascinating to see these images now. I never considered videoing it at the time and may have been an issue as we had all signed the Official Secrets Act on joining GPO

From what i understand, the tunnels are still used for cabling, so am assuming its just the exchange underground thats been decommissioned? Do you know if any of the equipment is still down there?

@@nzoomed there's virtually nothing down there now except for the cables and the two generators.

It wasn't for me, I used to nick the tins of boiled sweets out of the ration packs… YUMMY!

I used to maintain the dolls eye switchboard in the war rooms under the bt tower and the phones down the tunnels on pw maintenance was so cool. That would have been mid 80s to 94 when I left bt. Great to see this video.

I will pay you for information. Seriously.

Hey wonder if we’re related,I married into the Howarth family they are from Bury and Bolton

Recorded about 1994 ish.... while working above.

In the UK all the telephone system is underground, via cables. Guardian was the trunk lines the telephonists upstairs in the exchange used them there was 100 telephonists upstairs connecting calls from the public. Now it’s different fibre optics and satellites make the system obsolete Kingsway, Anchor and Pioneer lines must all be down in the tunnel now Obsolete

Manchester is large city and in common with all large cities including London, Birmingham and others cannot be served by one telephone as there were technical reasons (ie local end losses in copper cables which traditionall owing to increased resistance, would impair loop dial signalling and transmission quality. A sectorized system known as a Director system involving several telephone exchanges each with it's own area prefix in the different areas was needed. These prefixes would be translated into routing digits in order to route the call to the required exchange using register translators. You raise the question, 'if the existing exchanges where destroyed what would this exchange connect to?' The answer is non of them. It would have been unlikely that all the sector local exchanges would be destroyed during an attack. Guardian was a Non Director Exchange similar to Kingsway in London which was primarily to provide routing through Manchester to other locations in the UK, also to give access to local exchanges in Manchester and Manchester operators. The General Post Office devised a very powerful system in order that operators could route trunk calls using designated codes not available to the public via numerous trunk exchanges in the UK. For example, a Plymouth operator could access a trunk exchange in Reading dial through this exchange to Aberdeen etc. Furthermore because of the ingenious planning of the GPO, the call would incur no transmission losses and in this case 2 db which is undetactable by the human ear. The point being that trunk exchanges above ground were vulnerable to attack but Manchester, Kingsway, Birmingham were protected which gave protected incoming access to these cities as well as trunk switching access for through traffic. Guardian dates from the 1950's and was provided in addition to the existing tandem exchanges which also handle incoming traffic. Over the last 30 years, digital switiching have replaced the old analogue technology. QED.

Sorry, should have read 'served by one telephone exchange'.

TheRouletteGenius I can't say for sure 100% but I would expect so as BT still use these tunnels to carry fibre optic cables under the city between core exchanges.

thanks my friend

Yep we were BT employee's you had to be as the entrance was guarded by a Security guard so you needed a reason to go down. I just told them I was gas testing ;-) plus they knew us both.

bluenail90 hi,where's m21

Quite possibly,if you go up the east lancs road towards Liverpool, at Leigh on your right side there's a farmer's field with raised concrete lids.This is the entrance to a nuclear bunker where the north west government would have took shelter during a nuclear war.

The ROC bunkers have a quite distinctive and standard layout above ground. I’ve been in one in north Staffordshire and have seen them all over now I know what they are. Look for two low brick and louvered structures about 4-6m apart. Usually green painted. One will be the entrance and one for ventilation and the monitoring gear. An upside u-bend is common along with one tin can shaped and one or two square metal projections. There is usually an alignment of them on hills or over looking valleys. Spaced abou 10-15 miles apart. It would have been horrendous as the observers jobs was to record the destructive force of the bomb and then get out to return to whatever was left of their base.

There used to be a telephone exchange in Chorlton it was the last to go automatic in Manchester, that may be some thing to do with it, it was a manual exchange with telephonists

This is raw VHS footage straight from the camera for an authentic 90's video of the moment. It was not recorded for the Internet as at the time the Internet did not exist as it is today. No RU-vid in 1996

I maintained hundreds of MUGS in Pioneer. Worked in MR/GUA in the 70's. Walked all the tunnels testing emergency phones every Monday morning, popping up in Dial House to use thier canteen.

@@JimmyJagg This place had a canteen upstairs it was always full of engineers

@@user-oh7iv3ij5x York Street

@@JimmyJagg yes Dial house had the biggest.canteen though. I left in 73.

These kind of pictures were common in telephone exchanges back in the 80's even a library of Playboy books would not be uncommon.