# T R's



## david.hopcroft (Jun 29, 2005)

Who remembers these. Mostly used as notelet pads latterly. Which is why I still have a few !!!

In the late 60's, turn over of RO's at Cost Stations was quite quick. I can remember taking a TR from a ship QTO Hull, followed by an apology that he wouldnt' be reporting for duty on Monday !!

David
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## IAN M (Jan 17, 2009)

Extracted from book, LAST VOYAGE AND BEYOND. 

The work at Portisheadradio was interesting and varied. Everybody took a turn at doing every job and it was organised so that you never did the same job for more than two hours.

Incoming traffic for the UK arrived at the Station in two ways: (a) by direct communication with the ship and (b) over the direct teleprinter link with the Naval Station in Whitehall where messages were received from other Area Stations over the fixed naval network. A careful check was kept of the numbers of all telegrams received from ships and in the middle of the floor in the Control Area, an operator was kept busy on this job alone. If telegram No.2 were received and there was no record of No.1, there was an immediate enquiry to the ship. If the operator at an H/F point was still in communication with the ship, it could be contacted in this way. If not, a message would be put into the Area Broadcast. Obviously it was important under this system to know where the ship was and, more importantly, to which Area Broadcasts the ship's Radio Officer was listening. This was where the TRs (messages which gave this information) came in and within the same Control Area, TRs were continually being filed for reference. It was in***bent on the ship's R/O to let us know in advance when the ship was due to enter a different Area and exactly when he would begin to listen to the traffic lists of that Area.


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

The last TR I sent was to ZLW ... QTP Wellington. By that stage of the game, I don't think they were too interested but I sent it anyway. Felt a bit sad at the time.

John T


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## Larry Bennett (Aug 28, 2005)

TRs were still used at GKA right till the very end, although to be honest they were very few and far between in the last decade or so. Used mainly from the 1940s to the 1970s where there was a "Ship's Bureau" at GKA where details of the regular ships were held with their latest TR. Helped with re-routing to-ship telegrams where required. Latterly they were used to arrange blind broadcast schedules when QTP. GKA staff may recall "Point 43" which was used for this purpose. Ian M gives a concise overview of the use of the TR in the 1950s in an earlier post.
Larry +


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## Troppo (Feb 18, 2010)

The Aussie stations stopped accepting TRs in the late 80s.


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## peterh76-86 (Jan 13, 2012)

Standing by a ship in Dublin and sailing to Liverpool. Sent TR to GLV via telex. Few hours later was on my way home. It was the only time in10 years at sea that I sailed with a telex machine.


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## Dimples82 (Aug 24, 2014)

TR's, they were stressed as being very important when I was at Plymouth doing my MRGC ticket. All the time I was at sea (depending where I was) I used to send them to GK, 9VG, JOS & AMVER.


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## Naytikos (Oct 20, 2008)

I have never seen one of those forms, presumably they were a UK coast station 'device'.

I rarely sent a TR except when changing Areas on a British ship; and never afterwards. Most coast stations were not interested, I think it must have been a peculiarly UK and Commonwealth thing.

Lets face it, a coast station receiving a message from somewhere to send to a ship has to assume that the ship will at some time contact it, if not for that message then to send it something. The station will not return the message to sender just because it has not yet had any contact with the ship. 
So the whole concept only makes sense if there is some sort of central routeing organisation and a wide choice of national coast stations to choose from.
UK, S.A. and Oz fit the bill; India I'm not sure about and the U.S. worked completely differently anyway, as did Chile. I can't think of any other country with more than a couple of coast stations.


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