From Ben Wiersum:

See plenty of that style service here in our exchange heritage district.

This is actually clean compared to some 100 year old buildings with the multiple services being tapped off the ug riser. One building I pass by regularly doesnt even have a weather head on top of the riser. The wires come out the top and it looks like the opening is sealed with a blob of mortar.

Looks like the weatherhead on the left side was original, and then the service drop was changed from OH to UG. The new service lateral was run up the side of the building to a second weatherhead, and jumped onto the old one with flying splices.

A very ugly installation, but not a violation as far as I know...

I agree with NJ, this looks like it was originally an overhead service and has been converted to an underground service.

If you look just under the under the weather head on the right you can see a metal strap that had been the point of attachment for the overhead drop.

This is one of the better looking ones posted on ECN. Many are much uglier than above.

[This message has been edited by iwire (edited 08-12-2006).]

What's that tubular thing on the right side of the pic?.

That is one of those splice things that the phone company uses. I am not sure, but, I think that it is for splice connecting multi-pair cables.

It is a telephone cable splice case.

Can anyone tell if the telephone slice is one of the old lead ones or one of the new plastic ones?

From what I have been reading the lead splices took real skill to form up on a ladder or one of those swinging tents they had on the poles.

The splice looks like a plastic one that has been painted. I have only ever once seen a lead one, and it was in a really really old building. It also had a braided-type cable coming into it. The jacked seemed like that old style NM stuff. I'll see if I can find the pic.