Midsummer Day's Work : laying cable the old fashioned way

Transcript

Narrator: Let's make the journey from Amersham to Aylesbury and see the cable layers at work.

In the Amersham section, the work is still at an early stage. Digging has just begun in front of the old market hall.

Just outside the town, trenches are being dug about three feet deep. The foreman, the contractor's agent with the Post Office supervisor, the men - working in gangs of 20.

Here is the pipe being laid to carry the cable. Each length of pipe is threaded on a rope and the cable is pulled through the pipe from manhole to manhole.

In this section, the gangers have struck solid rock and have to blast their way. To prevent danger from flying splinters, the charges are fired under a heavy blanket of corrugated iron, tree trunks, steel weights and torpedo nets.

Post Office engineers test the cable before official acceptance.

Now we're in a section which is quite finished there are scars on the road but they'll soon disappear.

We're near Aylesbury, the gangs will soon be knocking off for the day, their Midsummer day's work is over.