Working Telegraph

Actually, that's not a "pipe dream" (no matter what you might be smoking in that pipe.) My Morse Telegraph Club chapter (Spokane, Washington) puts on demonstrations in the Pacific Northwest where telegrams are sent via the landline in American Morse and received in another room at the depot; the telegram is converted to International Code and sent by Amateur Radio to anyone via radio. It's a very popular demonstration.

Sending them from the midpoint might be good, with the passenger receiving a copy of their telegram at the end point of their trip. While using real wire is a good thing at least for some distance, you wouldn't have to wire the whole line. The MTC group has simple circuitry now for using the regular phone lines for telegraphy, and there has been some success using the Web to do the same thing. Check with Grag Raven or Ed Trump for more info. Ed Trump designed one of the telegraph-over-phone circuits, BTW.

73,

Skip Luke
Switchman (ret): Grand Canyon Railway;
Engineer (ret): Georgetown Loop RR Inc., Sumpter Valley Ry., Monticello & Sangamon Valley;
Dispatcher(ret): Illinois Central, White Pass & Yukon, Burlington Northern Ry.
Mariner, Musician, Miner