I’m so all would like a little more information as I got this from another forum as what he wrote…..A few guesses here. PCC could stand for ‘Prospect CountyCouncil’ which is a confusing name as it was an electricity utility coveringwest of
Sydney through the Blue Mountains to the Tablelands, but there could be otherentities abbreviated PCC in Australia.
The shackle is stamped ‘Made in England’ - Yale supplied the Australian and NewZealand market mostly from England.
English Yale had different multiplex families from USA Yale - the ones I knowof are:
JW (two lower grooves equal size and 4 upper ‘pips’ W X Y Z giving 6 profiles)presumably referenced JW-AB for example.
NA (lower grooves opposite JW and 6 upper ‘pips’ A B C D E F giving 15profiles)
YN (unequal lower grooves and 6 upper pips A-F)
SC (small diameter cylinder 4-6 pin 4 upper pips A-D)
English Yale used these profiles for ‘restricted’ keyways as well asmasterkeying and claimed in their catalogue they did not sell blanks to anyone,
but did provide blanks to some New Zealand and other foreign locksmiths andwholesalers otherwise obtaining extra keys would have been quite unwieldy.
The cylinders were usually 6 pin but 5 pin was also used for cabinet type lockswith full size cylinders and for nightlatch type cylinders
used for mortise latches where length was at a premium (the set screws were ina horizontal line with the plug rather than the
center of the cylinder as the holding screws passed through the lock case).
I think the SC profiles were also used on Rolls Royce’s.
The illustrated padlock seems to be one of the YN profiles. The number 9853would be the system number and
A2 the change key reference. Yale did not stamp profile references on plugs orsupplied keys (but stamped the two profile letters
on blanks supplied to the trade).
Sonnette (a British aftermarket blank firm) for a while supplied JW and NAmaster sections only under designations 40 and 40R.
But were leaned on to desist (I do not know the politics at play here). In myopinion anyone who sells master section blanks only
or cuts change keys on master section blanks should be taken out and shot -they are a security hazard. There are currently blank
suppliers (Google ‘Yale yn blanks’ for example) and I have seen 4 pin SC blanksin a catalogue under ‘Rolls Royce’.
The British call these ‘security’ keys which seems to be a corruption of’Surety’ keys as the world’s first multiplex masterkey
system was installed in the Surety Building in New York in the 1890’s using theYale GA, GB etc. series (source - a posting by
Billy Edwards on the alt.locksmithing group years ago).
I have hunted out a local NZ locksmith supply catalogue from1967 and it has a page with diagrams of British Yale
multiplex sections. This padlock almost certainly is an YN-BC section. peterwn
