A new Phone Box For Marina Cay!

The British Virgin Islands has a new phone box - and it’s a classic red English phone box – standing proudly on the dock of Pusser’s Marina Cay. “The Pusser’s Red Box” as we've called it, is an old English K6 telephone box and one of over 70,000 that were installed in the UK between 1936 and 1968.

The Red Box is fully functioning with international coin and phone card calling from Cable & Wireless. Plus it has a web cam trained on it with world wide web access from www.pussers.com/redbox.

The high-resolution web cam is installed on the wall of the fuel dock facing the Red Box. Visitors can have their picture taken by standing in front of the Red Box. The camera takes a new photo every 15 seconds which is then posted to the 'Find Your Picture' section on our web site where photos can be retrieved. From there visitors can submit pictures to the permanent 'Red Box Gallery' for viewing in the years to come.

“It's fun to make a call from the Red Box and tell a friend to view you on their computer,” said Charles Tobias, chairman of Pusser’s. “People at the other end of the phone can take a photo by clicking the button shown on the side on the page. They can submit this photo to our Red Box Gallery and send it to friends.”

This classic K6 Red Box which was purchased many years ago in Preston, England, was recently renovated by the Pusser’s maintenance crew using spares from UK-based Unicorn Kiosk, specialists in telephone box renovation. After its careful and time-consuming restoration, the 1600 lb phone box had to be moved from one island, Tortola, to another, Marina Cay.

A truck crane was called in to move the Red Box. After a slow and precarious trip on the Pusser's forklift from the Pusser’s warehouse to the crane it was loaded and securely strapped down - the forklifit barely survived to tell the tale! From the warehouse it was a short but slow ride to a small beach at Baugher’s Bay where a landing craft style barge was waiting.

The truck drove straight on to the barge, the ramp closed, and the barge set off up the Sir Francis Drake Channel on the 9-mile trip to Marina Cay.

Once the barge was docked at Marina Cay it was a relatively simple process of loading the Red Box straight on to the dock. However, the Red Box did look in jeopardy when the crane crew had to tip it to remove the straps from under the base – one false move and into the drink it would go!


K6 Facts

The K6 was designed in 1935 to commemorate the silver jubilee of King George V. K6 was the first red telephone kiosk to be used extensively outside of London and many thousands were deployed in virtually every town and city, replacing most of the existing kiosks and establishing thousands of new sites.

The red that is now much loved was then anything but, and the Post Office was forced into allowing a less strident grey with red glazing bars scheme for areas of natural and architectural beauty. Ironically, some of these areas that have preserved their telephone boxes have now painted them red.

Initially known as the 'Jubilee' Kiosk, some 70,000 examples were installed around the UK between 1936 to 1968.

K6 kiosks were produced in five foundries: Carron Foundry, Lion Foundry, McDowall Steven, Macfarlane (also known as Saracen Foundry) and Bratt Colbran.

K6 kiosk doors are made from teak wood! Their heavy inner cast iron glazing bars and slow moving closure mechanism give the impression of a one piece solid unit.

K6 kiosks equipped with interiors weigh 750kgs (14.25 CWT / 3/4 ton / 1653 lbs) They stand an impressive eight foot four inches by three foot square. Telephone boxes are renowned to be red, however in the 1940's kiosks in a setting of 'particular natural beauty' were often painted Battleship Grey with red glazing bars. This was to 'blend in' more with the surroundings!

K6 kiosks comprise 18 separate cast iron sections and are held together with exactly 200 screws. The units are either fabricated at the foundry or erected on site. Assembled kiosks were installed using crane units or purpose built kiosk trailers.

Some 2,500 examples of K6 have been granted 'grade II listings'.

Approximately 14,000 examples of K6 remain on the UK streets.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_telephone_box