Core Colours

[westie101]

Talk turns from time to time about phase names and core colours.
We all know of Red, Yellow, Blue, or L1, L2, L3, or Brown, Black, Grey.
At one time in some areas Yellow was known as white.
But not everything is straight foreward, one of the towns I cover has some interesting PICAS cables. Core clours are Red, Yellow, Blue & Green.
But they are actually connected
Red = L1
Yellow = L2
Green = L3
Blue = N.

We always have to check and prove the core uses if jointing on dead circuits

 

[RF Lighting]

Red White and Blue was my favorite. Very patriotic

 

[Spark123]

I have seen some old Norweb drawings (Showing my age now) where they houses are labelled R Y BL W G so I took it to mean the odd colour schemes are pretty common, what is PICAS cable?
I can understand the nightmare the DNO lads have with all the varying colours, with the addition of a few more can only add to confusion!!
Last time the UU/Electricity NW guy was around he had all the drawings on a laptop.

 

[GaryMo]

A Google search came up with 'Paper-Insulated Corrugated Aluminium Sheathed'. I wondered too.

 

[Spark123]

Is that one of the types of cable which is a nightmare and constantly goes wrong?

 

[westie101]

Apologies on the cable type, I was typing between phonecalls! I meant PILC (actually some pre-war stuff)!

Yes all our records are now on laptops/servers which also allows public access to them via the website.

 

[Spark123]

I'll have to have a play with the website, last time I used it for the "before you dig" I had to select an area on a map and ENW emailed me a pdf of the area.
I think we still have some PILC around here, the incomer to the local theatre looks like PILC.

 

[westie101]

There are huge amounts of it in all of the county, it was all that was installed until the early 1970s (though from the '60s it was aluminium cored)

Never used the service myself (I've had a laptop for a few years) it may still be the case. In UU days all you had to do was register for access to a thinned down version.