Where are all the UK red telephone kiosks? | Hacker News Reader

Where are all the UK red telephone kiosks?

thek6project.co.uk

91 pointsKaibeezy65 comments

The box in Meols, Merseyside has been turned into a small museum honoring the band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. The box was their makeshift booking office in the early days and the box's number (6323003) was used in the song "Red Frame White Light"

"To this day, it is still likely the highest-charting song entirely about a public phone box."

https://www.thek6project.co.uk/2022/08/30/meols-merseyside-c...

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/omd-telephone-box

I grew up on the Wirral and and moved to USA in my early twenties I’m nearly 50 now and that 632 3003 gave me absolute frisson mate, nice one.

If curious why I posted this:

  - someone told me about a fish—n-chip buffet in Arbroath, Scotland
  - I told my team, one of them asked “just fish?”
  - I replied “batter fried pizza too”
  - one of them made the inevitable comment about defibrillators
  - I pointed out many of these red kiosks have been repurposed to hold defibrillators and went looking for images

> someone told me about a fish-n-chip buffet in Arbroath, Scotland

if it’s the fish and chip shop (buffet is a different thing here), i’ve been there and they do a banging fish supper.

The Bellrock lunch buffet, £15 weekdays.

“3 courses including Soup, Pizzas, Haddock, Spicy Fish, White pudding, King Rib, Chefs dish of the day. Hot desserts with Custard, Cold desserts i.e trifle and cakes, Cold Meats, Pasta, Salad, Whippy Ice cream.”

https://www.thebellrock.co.uk/lunch-buffet

ah i assumed it was a language thing. my bad. that’s on me. was a while ago i was up arbroath way.

still, the fish and chips are banging.

I think OP is referring to this https://www.thebellrock.co.uk/lunch-buffet which does appear to be a fish-n-chip buffet of sorts (amongst other things) which has been in various tabloid newspapers in the last month or so.

I grew up with these things, but they look so weird now, like a Tardis.

I remember having fun as a kid placing a reverse charge call from one phone booth to another across the street. Apparently the operator didn't have a way of knowing the number you were asking to make a call to was a phone booth, so your buddy across the street answers the operators call and graciously agrees to accept the reverse charge call (which is then free - no need to put any money in).

The few iconic blue police boxes that are left also need to be protected.

> Apparently the operator didn't have a way of knowing the number you were asking to make a call to was a phone booth,

They did.

In the UK, when a payphone _answered_ a call, the payphone played a "cuckoo" tone (beep-boop) for about ten seconds. This alerted the operator not to allow reverse charge calls. Of course in more recent yeas an operator probably hasn't a clue what the payphone cuckoo means, hence you getting away with it.

I'm talking mid-late 1970's

I was just thinking how it'd be great if there were newer, modern things like this that had sprung up in response to newer technologies.

I guess it's one downside of dematerialisation with digital tech - I can't think of a single thing that would make sense. Everyone's got their own virtual portal to all the new technologies that come out, there's not much to look at out in the world.

Maybe as more progress happens in physical 'world of atoms' type things we'll see a bit of this come back.

As someone that tries to survive (every day more difficult) with just a dumbphone with me, I just fantasized about a parallel universe where all those kiosks still existed, and they were somehow like computer that you can briefly rent, to do the things people do with a smartphone. Perhaps you tap a card, and it picks your accounts, and you can quickly Whatsapp someone, check your email, call an Uber or use Google Maps (maybe even check hacker news, but with time limit?!)

Maybe then many people would stop carrying their own portals, as you can briefly use the public ones for the one-off situation where you need it, but enjoy a portal-free mind the rest of the time. Also quite useful in case emergencies as it seems those portable-portals tend to run out of battery, or get lost or damaged...

There was a brief moment around the turn of the millennium where that was what some of us were expecting. I was in college just after that and there were some free Internet kiosks, which combined with the ubiquitous free-to-use computer labs on campus, did a pretty good job of making this type of lifestyle possible, to the extent you could store your important documents online (much harder though in a pre-Dropbox, pre-Google Docs world!). Or another thing that was a big trend then was Portable Apps. On a flash drive on your keychain, you'd have installs of apps that you needed, together with their data and whatever documents you might need.

There was a brief period before that where some airports had pay phones with text terminals and modems built in, so you could dial up your corporate email or CompuServe. I swear I did not dream this.

“They have phones in booths now? Finally! I don’t have to lug this cell phone around.”

Hermes Conrad, Futurama Season 6, Episode 6: Lethal Inspection

a parallel universe where all those kiosks still existed, and they were somehow like computer that you can briefly rent, to do the things people do with a smartphone

In the early days of the Internet, this existed somewhere in western Europe where I was traveling.

There was a phone booth down the block from my hotel and a couple of times I popped in and used it to check my email.

Maybe Vienna or Amsterdam? It was a long time ago. Swiping one's own credit card would have been unusual then, so I have no idea how I paid for it. Especially since I mostly used travelers checks.

For a moment they put phones that had the ability to do text messages in them (but still looked very ordinary), which feels a little retro futuristic.

Looked better than the weird ad screen monstrosities you get now with a token phone on them.

Some suggestions:

- Not sure what they're called, but I've seen a lot of fully automated outdoor "locker stations" for packet deliveries

- Power bank "banks" or charging stations for smartphones in indoor spaces like malls

- QR codes on stickers/ads in public spaces are a sort of bridge between the physical and digital worlds

In some Asian countries electric scooters with swappable battery packs are very common, and they have roadside battery swap stations where (for a subscription fee?) you can take a freshly charged battery and leave your old one. Seems like a great idea.

Just went through Orlando airport and saw something called "power rod" that is basically that for small power banks: you drop your depleted bank and pick up a fully charged one. If I were a US-only traveller, I can see myself using it.

> QR codes on stickers/ads in public spaces are a sort of bridge between the physical and digital worlds

They are already like that for at least a decade. The last time I visited London the phone booths all had ads for escort services pasted inside.

> - Not sure what they're called, but I've seen a lot of fully automated outdoor "locker stations" for packet deliveries

Drop boxes!

I was part of a team prototyping these some 20 years ago. I highly doubt we were the only team doing so, but we were certainly unaware of any commercially available/deployed stations at the time. I was writing the software, in particular the orchestration of the locks and event bus for the transmissions.

Lots of fun from trying to fathom how undocumented solenoids operated, to trips to various countries for remote and environmental testing, and destructive tests simulating someone driving a truck into an installation (i.e., by deliberately driving a truck into one!)

The nerdiest moment was taking a mainboard model that we were getting intermittent faults with and recreating the exact environmental conditions to recreate the problem. This involved incubating the mainboard in a sealed environment chamber to control temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure. The fault was bit-flipping because electrons were jumping rails when the microchip(s) were cold and damp.

How about:

  - tap-to-pay paypoints
  - drive-under toll collection readers
  - signal-blocking phone pouches at concerts
  - anti-facial-recognition dazzle makeup
  - wireless chargers in the table at McDonald’s

   - a tree that grows money
   - harmony between worlds

If we are making lists. I'm still waiting for IRL Patch 2.0 and the fix for collision detection of eye lash to eye ball.

Maybe we’re not running the same system version, but I’m quite certain my eyelash to eyeball collision detection works great (and the alert can be anywhere from annoying to quite painful.)

A collision prevention enhancement would be fabulous!

There are!

https://business.bt.com/public-sector/street-hubs/

I don't know if they still exist, but for a while when pay phones were disappearing in the US, NYC converted a number of them into free WiFi access points.

Tesla Supercharger stations.

Here in Australia, public payphones, instead of being removed were all made free.

They provide a lifeline to women fleeing domestic abuse, who need to contact services without their phone being tracked. Also to homeless and other vulnerable people who may not have access to a phone.

Statistics show lots of calls to emergency services, centrelink (Australia's welfare agency) etc...

I love seeing the occasional phone box in a quaint village which has been converted into a super compact library. It reminds me that community spirit and trust are alive.

Actually here in Germany that the favourite use for our old yellow boxes, many have become book sharing hubs.

We have one where I live. You have reminded me I have another batch of books to take down to it.

I've seen those back in the day during a visit to London but they were usually really dirty and completely plastered with adverts for escort services :) Not that I am against that kind of thing but it made it a bit low-rent. Ps the same ads were also constantly studded

Do they want to preserve the real thing as it was or some glorified abstract of it?

Of course one or two should remain but people don't use these anymore. If they all remained they would just be used as makeshift urinals and for addicts shooting up.

In my own country we didn't have the ads (one can simply advertise such services in the paper) but we did have torn phonebooks, smokey booths and often destroyed phones.

Oh there's a part missing, it should read "the same ads were also constantly stuffed under our window wipers when parked". Most curious phenomenon, haven't seen that elsewhere except in Poland.

The ones in Hull are all cream coloured: https://www.thek6project.co.uk/2023/07/13/hull-university-ea...

The crowns are also ground off I think

https://www.kcom.com/about-us/history/ they were operated by a separate company, so the crown wasn't appropriate.

https://www.thek6project.co.uk/the-crowns-on-k6-telephone-bo... there's a note about Hull's phone boxes at the bottom of this page.

In Spain there is one in Artxanda, about literal 5 minutes from Bilbao by cable car. Take the cable car, literally turn right and walk a little, it's pretty much near the slope.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/cabina-inglesa-donde-menos-te-...

I would love refurbished one of these in my back garden, unfortunately they weigh far far too much to lift into my limited-access back garden and I’m not sure it’d have the same impact in the front garden.

You can get a refurbished K6 for about £3000, absolute bargain if you ask me!

https://www.x2connect.com/

Someone pushed them all over:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/rxcGDAc8Dv924zkv8

(It's art: https://secretldn.com/telephone-box-installation-kingston/)

Without even looking I assume this is the art installation in Kingston Upon Thames (a lovely town outside London, and next to Hampton Court). I remember this from childhood as I used to get my haircut opposite these phone boxes and regularly shopped with my nan at the Wilkinson's on the corner (an everything shop like a small Walmart).

Wilkinson's is no longer there. Replaced by an arcade style venue called Urban Fun, I think.

Many Kingstoners probably think of themselves as being in London. There's some graffiti on the way in to London on the A3 that says "Surrey not Surrey".

Guess that makes sense assuming the cinema is still round the corner.

I miss the days of the CEX store when it sold import games just round the corner as well.

Considering you have to travel through New Malden, Raynes Park (which for me is the border), and Norbiton to get to London, they would be wrong. I always assume many think like that as it potentially increases house prices but just having a TFL tap and go bus doesn't make somewhere London.

Amazingly CEX is still there, next to KFC. Odeon is still there at the top of the Rotunda. There's also now a Curzon cinema at the top of the Bentall centre.

New Malden, Raynes Park, Norbiton all in London in my mind, and their Wikipedia pages concur for what it's worth.

There's one near the Houses of Parliament, tourists often shoot photos there, and are surprised when the inside is filled with stickers advertising prostitutes.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/zLRxTFUXErcsrkCi7

To be fair, that's the authentic London telephone box experience of old.

I think the actual experience was stepping into human poo, needles and overwhelming stench of piss and let's not go into why the telephone was sticky.

Those are the urban ones. The ones in the countryside were useful sometimes if you were trying to get a taxi or a lift. They often had plants growing in them.

And some were in very remote locations. The Nant y Maen phonebox in Wales springs to mind although I think it no longer has a working phone in it.

Some of them were indeed. They were very handy in pre-mobile phone days for when your car broke down, or you had to contact someone.

Hopefully this database is integrated with OpenStreetMap.

OSM has extensive tagging scheme for phone booths: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dtelephone

It's referred to as a "telephone box". Never heard anyone call it a Kiosk.

The red phone box is a type of phone kiosk. The design of the phone box is designated as K1-K6, where the K stands for kiosk. I believe the term comes from the time before phone boxes were ubiquitous, and public phones were found in small buildings/rooms called kiosks.

Nice! Would be great if this had a map view as well.

Check the split by regions: https://www.thek6project.co.uk/where-are-all-the-boxes/

Love it!

Wasn't there a short period where they changed the colour? I'm thinking it was a beige thing - in the 80s???

There was some trial where they painted <100 yellow, as part of some rebranding and privatisation of British Telecom. There was a public outcry and they reverted

Ah yes, that would be what I was thinking of; I think I saw one somewhere in Manchester as a kid.

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The operation timed out when attempting to contact www.thek6project.co.uk.

Browsing these made me unreasonably nostalgic.

I know a Kiosk seller in California. It's always pretty separate from telephony system. Not integrated at all.

Everywhere?

nostalgia is a wonderful thing. Its actually not a wonderful thing, its a weird human condition that seems to have been converted into a psy-op by shady facebook accounts that have gone from posting 'who remembers white dog-shit and spangles' into AI generated pictures of london in various guises.

Yes, i suppose i am saying 'nostalgia is not what it once was' go figure.

But anyway. Phone boxes were shit. Often literally. Depending on where you were, they often stank of human waste of one form or another, and even in a time before fear of contagion, you were still reticent to hold that manky ear piece too close to your ear. The ones in london were plastered in pornography from the local people trafficers.

A phone box was somewhere that you went as a last resort. Or, judging by the smell in most of them, if you needed a piss.

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