It's sort of a prehistoric NID, it predates that concept. It's a arrestor block. The red things are fuses but over time the phone company just by passed them with straps. I've never heard why they did that, sometimes you'll find them without the straps, but usually it's as you see them.. Usually these fed right into a lightning arrester block (typically a round device about the size of an old screw in fuse).

This post was edited by ronnatalie on Thu, Jul 17, 14 at 5:38

Thanks, that makes sense, but whenever I bypass a fuse with something solid it gets expensive!