To be honest I never thought once of lifting any of those lamps.

I think the railways dept took steps to make theft unattractive. I have a feeling that they were not 240 volt, and may have been Edison screw base.

Thanks for the AWA film link. I don't believe I've seen that one before.

One of my aunts worked on the valve line at Ashfield during WW2. When I was a kid she used to tell me she made radio valves and I would wonder how she got it all in that little bottle.

I have a feeling that they were not 240 volt, and may have been Edison screw base.

Yeah, they were 32 volt 25 watt as far as I know and ES fancy round type.

I worked at Gladesville Hospital between 1990 and 1994 and there were lots and lots of Rowco ES and GES bases and these dated back to the 1930s when electricity replaced gaslight there. This was another anti-theft measure. Before the mid-1990s an ES base in a domestic situation was pretty much unheard of and BC bases dominated.

Yeah, they were 32 volt 25 watt as far as I know and ES fancy round type.

At 32 volts they would have suited many cow cockies, but not with an ES base and 25 watts was nothing worth taking either.

I recall that the lights always seemed to quit just as the train was entering a tunnel and, of course, the train would stop for a signal in there, too.

They probably chose the wattage and base with possession in mind. That said, my test lamps are 25 watt ES but they are pilot lamps rather than fancy rounds.

With ES base you get many consumers who screw them in too tight, then they bond in there after many hours of heat. So the service call is: "when removing, glass bulb detached and base is stuck in there!". My solution is grip outer edge of vestigial thin brass screw base with needlenose & rotate left; base will then usually unscrew - or crumple/tear out in stubborn cases, thus preserving the original lamp socket (saving more work!).

I see AWV factory had "Indian Head" test pattern and Tektronix 500 series oscilloscopes!
I purchased some of those AWV germanium transistors in the early 60s, they cost me 30/- each!

My grandfather was a maintenance electrician at AWA Ashfield. He had been a radio tech on the ground and flew in Lancaster's, Sunderland's and Catalina's as the Wireless Air Gunner during WW2. My father also worked there as a toolmaker. The number of manufacturing processes carried out in that factory and the skills involved to keep it all ticking over is incredible. I remember when I was a kid at my grandmother's house waiting for my grandfather to come home the streets around Ashfield would be crowded with all manner of people walking home from work shortly after knock off time.

Stuck lamps are an issue with a few bases. ES bases cause problems when they are fitted to downlights and R80 reflector lamps are used.

Those 'dulux' compact fluorescent lamps that push into a plastic base, again in the larger downlights that are often installed in office building corridors these days also get stuck and when that happens the lamp and the base have to be renewed. The good news is that there is a LED version of the 'dulux' series now and these barely get warm.

3 bob each for transistors way back then? I suppose that helped to pay off the gear set up to make them. I wonder if the people in the valve factory thought their days were numbered at the time. It must have been a bit disheartening to watch younger employees walking into the semiconductor factory each day. Still, that is progress. Today there's few transistors made apart from the power types. Whole circuits are sprayed onto silicon wafers now and sealed in a blob of plastic right onto a PCB - bringing a new meaning to "no user-serviceable parts inside".

The number of manufacturing processes carried out in that factory and the skills involved to keep it all ticking over is incredible.

That's the thing that struck me when I first saw the Mullard Blackburn film. Although there were many people manning the lines, I was trying to imagine the size of the maintenance team that would be required to keep it all running to specification.

The level of automation involved in some sections and the exactness of the machining required for some of the tiny parts is astounding, especially when you remember that there were no digital computers involved. I guess the analogue logic was electro-pneumatic.

In AWA's case, especially during the war years, they made almost everything themselves, right down to nuts and bolts. How times have changed.

3 bob each for transistors way back then?

Actually NewVista wrote 30/- which is 30 shillings, or one and a half quid, which at decimalisation in 1966 would have been $3.

Some comparison figures for 1962:

Price of a loaf of bread: 18 cents
Average weekly wage for male workers: $49.40

Taking inflation into account 30 bob in 1962 equates to just over $66 in today's money according to the RBA.

Yeah I should have said £1-10s, in ~1964?, from TV repair shop, might have got ripped off, certainly not wholesale

Yes, I misread that. Always happens when I post a comment just after getting up for the day.

Early adopters always get ripped off - or it looks like that in hindsight.

Compare what you got then for the amount of logic and functionality packed into a $35 Raspberry Pi credit-card-size computer, or even a $35 cellular phone.

The streets of Ashfield are no longer crowded at knock-off time, but the streets of Shenzhen in China are. One reason is that Australian workers are more likely to be driving a 2-ton gas-guzzler 50kms to a vast empty outer-suburban air-conditioned house with a $500,000 mortgage, rather than walking home with a lunchbox. On average, we don't add enough value to account for the costs of our lifestyle. When we run out of un-earned income from natural resources, some hard questions will have to be asked about what happens next.

Maven

A classic example of that was when plasma televisions were first release for sale. $30,000.00 for that please... And that was with no HD and an analogue tuner only. Now the same size model comes with a FullHD digital tuner and possibly 3D and a 600Hz refresh rate for something like $800.00 and even though there is still no 3D broadcasting after all these years the retailer often throws in 3D glasses and a HDMI cable for the Blueray player.