The Post Office's cable-fault laboratory on a Land Rover Forward Control: test van SGW 433F, fleet number 292689, of 1968, with its own integral power supply and a duct television rig — camera control, video control and monitor — for looking inside underground cable ducts.
Finding a fault in a buried telephone cable is a matter of instruments, and the instruments were too many and too delicate to carry in a van and set up in the rain. The Post Office therefore built the test rig into a vehicle, and put the vehicle on a Land Rover Forward Control so that it could get to a duct wherever the duct ran.
The test van has its own integral power supply, and the equipment photographed inside is the duct TV set-up: a camera control unit on the left, video control in the centre and a monitor on the right, for driving a camera along a duct and watching what it found. The vehicle is SGW 433F, fleet number 292689, registered in 1968 on the Series IIB Forward Control chassis. Its tall laboratory body, upper windows and rear stabiliser jacks — to hold it steady while people worked at benches inside — are visible in the photograph.
ENGINESeries IIB Forward Control driveline — 2.25 L petrol or diesel inline-four, or 2.6 L petrol inline-six; the Post Office record does not state which
PRODUCTION RUNUnknown — one vehicle documented
COUNTRY OF ORIGINUnited Kingdom
OPERATED INUnited Kingdom
STATUSunknown
RECORD KINDNamed model
MODEL LINESeries IIA
WHEELS4
NOMINAL WHEELBASE110″
CATEGORYSpecial · GPO/Mail
Catalogue fields describe the vehicle's structure and body as this registry records it. They are not certified factory measurements, and no performance figures are published here.
Renders & references
Front three-quarterRegistry renderThree-quarterRegistry renderSideRegistry renderRearRegistry renderFrontRegistry renderPost Office Land Rover Forward Control cabling test van SGW 433F, 1968britishtelephones.com ↗
