Re: Telegraph wires

Been looking over photos for the past few nights trying to nail down some details this thread has piqued my interest on.

The original DSP&P telegraph line ran two wires pretty early on. Perhaps upon reaching Como, the second wire was added for the split to Breckenridge and Buena Vista ? More study needed.

By the late 80's, four wires were running up Platte Canon on a general rebuild of new poles and six pin crossarms, the center pinhole being left without a pin for a wide spacing. This configuration lasted largely untouched until the major WU rebuild we have been discussing here previously. However, photos show a 5th wire on a second crossarm around Buffalo in the late teens. A similarly dated photo near Sheridan Jct. shows six wires. One always led off to Morrison, so that leaves five. It would be nice to find a third pic of somewhere in between to confirm this is the same added wire. It does add the question as to where this wire went ?

The Sheridan Jct pic is the newest dated photo I have found so far showing the line before the WU rebuild. It is dated June, 1918.
A photo dated "1920" shows the WU rebuild in place. The weather does not look like winter, so we might assume this rebuild occurred somewhere between June, 1918 and mid-1920. More study might narrow this down further.

My local contact in the South Park tells me his dad helped with the scrapping operation and that the telegraph lines were rendered useless as they removed sections along the way. He also stated that the line was derelict and almost useless before abandonment. This is not at all true, as the scrapping operation was well documented on a day-to-day basis and one can clearly see the line still in good condition in many of the scrapping photos. This leads me to think his memory might be fuzzy or tainted with local lore.

A photo in Vol. 1 of the Mineral Belt of the Jefferson depot some years after the rails were gone shows a rather sad looking depot and a very NON-C&S looking depot pole with steel break iron bars and no drops, as if the line was still in service, but no longer railroad. this is quite contrary to what my contact described.

More study .....