Etrump Wrote:
=======================================================
> AFAIK there was a single iron Morse wire that
> parallelled the DSP&P RR though Alpine Pass &
> tunnel that went from Leadville to Parlin, thence
> to battery at Gunnison.
>
> There was a Telegraph office at St Elmo at one
> time. I don't know if this same wire was
> involved or not.
>
> Earl "Woody" Woodward, the T&T maintainer out of
> Pueblo whom I worked with a lot during
> my D&RGW Comm Dept days, once told me of an
> "overland" wire that left the RR lines
> somewhere along where the DSP&P ran in the Buena
> Vista area and went over that way...It could have
> been the original wire that followed the RR and
> continued to be maintained after the RR was
> abandoned.
>
>
> More digging to do with this one....
>
> Ed FB
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Ed, The original wire (single) went OVER the top. It was completed to Gunnison LONG before the tunnel was completed and is well documented in photos. I have an original crossarm with pins (oddly made of redwood - very soft and weak for line construction) found on a downed pole on the Quartz Creek side in 1953. The original insulators were CD 133.4 Hemingray No.3 "bullets" with the DEC. 19. 1871 patent date, as was the entire original line from Platte Canyon westward.
Many have stated the line never went through the tunnel, and I have not walked it myself to see if the pins go all the way through to support the idea that the thru-wire was pushed through the bore. Some have suggested it was placed only partially through when work was done inside the tunnel, but no one really seems to know for sure.
As stated before, the insulator taken off one of these pins dates to the 1901-1909 period and would turn purple if ever exposed to the sun, so it was placed in the tunnel when new and never saw the light of day before being removed.