I have a book at home from the turn of the century on phone and telegraph engineering so perhaps will do a little research. If I understand correctly telegraph can use one wire with a ground (earth) return path. Telephone normally uses 2 wires. I assume the telegraphones used by DRG used one wire with grd. return so they could utillize the existing system. Someone please correct me and educate me on this.
White Pine depot was a pretty small simple building. Weathered boards still lay on the ground to mark the site. The company town of White Pine was about 1/2 mile behind the depot on Crawford Crk. The Baker White Pine Lbr. Co. mill there was a pretty big one. I recall a photo showing the boiler house having 6 smokestacks. 2 large ones I think and 4 small ones. They may have had 2 good sized mill boilers with a battery of 4 mostly used up locomotive boilers, but who knows at this point. In any event, at one time, I think there must have been a substantial amount of traffic through the White Pine depot to support this kind of logging operation. White Pine had a shop for working on their geared engines. I have no idea how many people lived there but I'd speculate with familys there could have been upwards of 50 people and perhaps with the loggers and their families many more than this. Baker White Pine had woods trackage leading out of White Pine in at least a couple directions plus trackage that leads up from the mill to end of the wye on the SVRy main next to the depot. Presumable all lumber being shipped was transfered at this point, plus all the supplies to support the mill and the work force and families. The point I am making is that if there was only one wire over to the depot and it was an unmanned depot as I and others have assumed, telegraph would have been usesless to the average person from down the hill at the mill town. It makes me wonder if for a period of years when White Pine mill was in operation if this was in fact a manned depot with an agent/operator. It would be interesting to get our hands on one of those SVRy phones to see if they were actual telephones or had the features whatever that might be of the telegraphones used on the DRG.
