Did railroads sometime run their telephone lines through the tunnels or did they all go up over the mountain?
GSRacer- To all of my knowledge the power lines, Telephone lines and any others would go up and over the mountain to prevent any damage due to a cave in of the tunnel. Now there might be some exceptions that I’m not aware of though. Otto
Hi!
Well, I have seen both - where the wires are run into the tunnel (top end on the side) or over or around the mountain.
I would imagine where it was not such a big deal, they would have preferred the wires to run on the outside - making them easier to get to. But for a large mountain range it would be easier to go thru the tunnel.
I have only one tunnel on the layout, and the pole line runs up the mountain, with the trees cleared to either side:
The line doesn’t, however, go over the mountain, but ends beneath the partial second level of the layout, which is yet to be built:
Wayne
The preferred option until relatively recently (circa 1960?) was to avoid lines in tunnels. Old style telegraphy maintenance was pretty labor intensive. Can you imagine how tough it would be to check the line in a tunnel back in the days when the carbide headlamp was state of the art? And dodging trains, to boot? It just didn’t make sense unless this seemed easier than maintaining a line over a particularly rugged mountain.
Compounding this issue is that fact that the underground environment is pretty hostile to wire and cabling, etc. Once technology improved and underground cabling became common at many locations with the Bell system, then putting these relatively lower maintenance lines in tunnels started to make more sense.
In Chicago, in the rare cases where the trains and ‘EL’ go underground through tunnels, power lines, phone lines go into the through the tunnel, with plenty of space on the sides for workers to get to and work on the system. I tunnels outside of cities I’ve pretty much seen only over the hill lines, mostly for ease of repairs and upgrades. In most cities of Europe which have metro systems as well as long underground train runs, the same holds true as for Chicago and other big U. S. cities.
Through the tunnel. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
GSRACER:
Your note of thanks would be better off attached to the original thread where your responders are more likely to see it.
When you want to add a comment to an existing thread, click on the ‘REPLY’ button below the post(s) you wish to respond to. That will attach your comment to the original thread.
What you have done here is you have clicked on ‘NEW POST’ which starts an entirely new thread. Your very important offering of gratitude may be missed by some because they are expecting to see it attached to the original thread. If they don’t see your note there they might mistakenly think that you have failed to acknowledge their input.
No harm done. Just a suggestion for future reference.
Dave
They are not telephone wires, the are signal wires,and they are done like this:
Through the tunnel… It is the only way!
Sure… My tunnels go under the RIVER! [swg]
I received 6 answers so far and I would like to thank you all. It was a big help.
gsracer
Thank you for letting me know how to use the system. I’ll try that next time.
Gary