My guess was to ease tenson on the poles by having less crossarms and running another pole line; however, someone else could answer this better.
I too remember the CNW running two pole lines on each side of the tracks from about Wheatland, IA to points east. One pole line had two crossarms and the another just one. I believe they removed these lines sometime back in the late eighties.
I always thought growing up that the more crossarms that were on the railroad’s pole line, the busier the railroad; and no pole line ment branch line. Not sure if there is any truth to that. I too miss the pole line just like the caboose.
TO: LA Rams Guy Would the two separate pole lines be used for… One side of the track for railroad use and the opposite side of the track be used for Western Union or a Bell Telephone system ?
TO: KC Very interesting run down of the pole line transsmissions. I worked with CP Telecommn’s as a Testing & Regulating Chief in the 1950’s Similar job as a wire chief. On a pair of wires, we would have three upperband circuits, consisting of 15 private wire teletype lines per band(total 45 teletype circuits). On the lower band we would have one phone line or CBC radio broadcast line. OR there could be 3 phone lines on the upperband instead of the teletype circuits. The morse line would also be on the lower band. It’s been a while back so someone might be able to correct me on this.
I worked for a while in Lac Megantic, Quebec (Just before the Maine border) We had a low power relay transmitter to supply CBC French network from Montreal to the town, which was in an isolated area
For my birthday a few months back, my son gave me a portable Leeds & Northrup Co. # 4282 ohmmeter. This is what the linemen would use to locate where a break was in the wires. It used a electrical formula called Kirchoff’s law (spelling ??) The wire chief would use this also, but it was a larger unit mounted on a bay in the wire chief’s or T&R Chief’s office. One day a T&R Chief was driving into the Megantic office & he noticed a pair of wires were broken just near the White Rose gas station.
About the two pole lines along the CNW double main. I’ve wondered if the signal circuits were segregated, north track circuits along the north side, south track on the south side. Communication lines would only have to be on one side, meaning one side would have more lines, and crossarms, than the other.
Concerning the locations of double poles (storm poles), I’ve noticed on the few derelict ones still standing that many, but I won’t say all, have extra gear on the crossarms. I’m not sure if it’s for signal or communications circuits, but I think it’s for the latter.
I know it drives the photographers nuts, but a main line, especially single tracked ones, looks like it’s missing something with out the pole lines. I’m sure the railroad doesn’t miss the expense. One downside is with the lines gone, they don’t keep the trees and bushes from growing on the right of way. Just the other day my conductor turned in a spot where trees had overgrown a spot and blocked the view of a block signal.
[tup] and [bow] to Kootenay Central for the details and ‘atmosphere’ in his post above. Thank you, sir, for taking the time to write up and preserve all of those recollections.
Back when you could buy a White’s Radio Log, (we bought them in the forties) which carried a list of all the stations in Canada and the U. S. A., I noticed that many of the Canadian stations had the note: “transmitter at Sackville, N. B…” or something like that. I wondered why (I did not wonder how they did it) they sent their signals there, but the above explains why.
Despite my dad’s dream that I become an electrical engineer, I haven’t paid that much attention to the workings of electricity. So, I am a bit embarrassed to ask if telegraphs required electricity. I can picture my dad’s old ham radio telegraph machine-thing, but I don’t remember if it needed power? I’m sure it did in order to amplify the signal. Did the early telegraph’s need a power source outside of the striking of the hammer against the wire?
And while I am at it, Kootenay Central…that was a great read.
On the NP/BN Communication workers were members of the IBEW. My dad claimed that he had covered the whole NP by motor car. Over the years he worked at South St. Paul, Minn. Missoula, Mont., Sand Point, Idaho, Castle Rock, Wa., and Auburn, Wa. as a district lineman. On crews he worked all over Montana and North Dakota. In 1967, the Great Plains was hit with a late season ice storm that knocked all the lines out from Minn through Montana. The NP sent all but a small group of Communication workers to the storm area to replace the lines. Dad was gone for six weeks before being allowed to come home for Memorial Day. Since his vacation was scheduled to start in another week he made arrangements to drive back with all of us. We got out of school a week early and spent a week at a motel in Dickinson, ND. My dad’s favorite story was about the time in 1948 that he met Harry S. Truman outside of Missoula. The President’s train stopped where my dad was working. Harry got out to stretch his legs and my dad had a nice conversation on the side of the tracks. When my dad passed away, we found a lot of pictures of line crews around Missoula in the late forties. When my dad was drafted for the Korean War the Army made him a lineman. He used to laugh and claim he was one of the few that did the same job in the service that he did in civilian life. He climbed right up to the day before he retired. I’m the only one of his kids that work for the railroad, but my time in the Communication dept. was short lived (climbing and I didn’t agree with each other) I work in the Mech. Dept. The pole lines on my dad’s old territory were removed completely the year he died.
Agree wholeheartedly. Doesn’t matter which mainline I’m on. But especially when you get on the “Overland Route” mainline in Iowa and there aren’t any pole lines it’s just like, “Damn, what happened to them?”
Some of the problems may have been due to the individual phones. Many years ago on the B&O, some of the track foremen and the track supervisor had phones. The supervisor’s phone worked great, but some of the foremen’s phones weren’t too good. The foreman on the work train had the worst phone of all-it wasn’t much use except for something else for him and the conductor to argue about.
There was electricity involved, although I won’t claim to know exactly how it was set up. If you look carefully at a “sounder” - the receive side of a telegraph circuit - you’ll notice a couple of electromagnetic coils that pull the arm down, corresponding to when the sending key is depressed.
Your father used “CW” or continuous wave for his ham code work. IIRC, the transmitter was on all the time and closing the contact on the key sends a tone over the air. I believe some early radio transmitters actually keyed the carrier.
In one of the previous threads that I referred to last night, there was another link to a website that would provide a lot more info. Unfortunately, as of this morning, it seems to be ‘unavailable’. I have been able to retrieve a little bit of it by searching for the article titles as an ‘Exact Phrase’ with Google Advanced Search, and then using its ‘Cached’ storage/ retrieval feature - at least one of those sites is stated to have been still active as of May 9th = 3 months ago. So I’ll post the pertinent excerpts here, hopefully pending a return of the full website on-line.
In one of the previous threads that I referred to last night, there was another link to a website that would provide a lot more info. Unfortunately, as of this morning, it seems to be ‘unavailable’. I have been able to retrieve a little bit of it by searching for the article titles as an ‘Exact Phrase’ with Google Advanced Search, and then using its ‘Cached’ storage/ retrieval feature - at least one of those sites is stated to have been still active as of May 9th = 3 months ago. So I’ll post the pertinent excerpts here, hopefully pending a return of the full website on-line.
Larry, if what I saw in the depot at home was standard, each station had a wet-cell battery (it was not lead-sulfuric acid); it may been solely to power the sounder in the station, but may also have been used to boost the current along the way. From time to time, the agent would have to build the battery up; I believe I knew just what the agent was doing when I saw him doing this one day, but in the more than fifty years since, I have forgotten just what it was.
Yes, it is a form of charging. Imagine how many stations had electric power (as we know it) when the use of telegraphy began. Nowadays, we simply plug an adapter into an outlet and get the power we need for the low voltage applications. I think agent added more of the salt (perhaps ferric chloride) that was used in the electrolyte, and he also may have added water to make up for loss from evaporation.
Yes, you spelled Kirchoff correctly, so it can be easy to look his laws (Current & Voltage) up. We do have to be careful with these names from other countries (they can be almost as bad as some of the Old Testament names).
Wheatstone bridge–I hadn’t thought much, if at all, of wheatstone bridges since I finished my course in physical chemistry 52 years ago. They can be very accurate, but I would doubt the accuracy implied by the T&R Chief’s report. I do not know what kind of circuitry is used by telephone companies to determine the location of breaks in lines, but a few months ago there was a break in one of the wires of our line, and the lineman was able to pinpoint it as being a certain number of houses away.