Re: Cumbres Phone

John,, and all the rest of you folks interested in the restoral of the Chama telegraph office...
The wall mounted board at Cumbres as shown in the photos here was virtually identical to that in the Chama depot...The stations at La Jara, Antonito, Sublette, Cumbres, Chama, (maybe Dulce) and Ignatio all had similar wall installations. La Jara and Antonito had a third "unit switchboard" due to one more Morse wire on that part of the line (old No. 01 wire to
Santa Fe that went down the Chili line....it was cut off at Antonito when that branch was abandoned, but retained on the line as a spare to Alamosa from Antonito.
The rest of the stations were all on the same line, and had the same wires and circuits going thru them.
Looking a the picture, I'd bet money those wall mounted boards were fitted out in the Pueblo D&RGW T&T maintainers shop. The T&T maintainers there had responsibility for the lines and equipment all the way over to Durango...they were probably made up all at the same time and then transported out and installed as an upgrade along the line shortly after or maybe during the upgrade W.U. did on the pole line to put in the dispatchers telephone circuit(Late 1930's-early 1940's). They used two of the original four Morse wires for this, paired and transposed them for voice service, and installed the DS telephone equpment. Safe bet all the office equipment was upgraded to it's final arrangement about the same time. The Telegraphones went away about this same time, as with the DS phone circuit they were no longer needed.