Telegraph

This is a bit off the topic of restoring the telegraph line to Chama, but it is of some interest. I have been slowly stringing telegraph lines on the model railroad, along with working order boards. Additionally I have been learning International Morse, which for me has been a rather slow process. Anyway, I have been studying telegraph lines in order to see how they were run. Here are a few things I have observed so far.

It seems that both the RGS and the EBT spaced their poles about 180 feet apart. Consistently they are 77 paces. I never had a wheel when I went out so that is about as accurate as I can get. Insulator placement on the RGS was all over the place and did not seem to follow any standard practice. The same goes for crossarms. The poles on the RGS are usually much shorter than on the EBT. I guess this was intentional since reaching the wires with the telegraphone stick would be tough on the 24 foot EBT poles. The RGS pole in the photo showing the telegraphone stick has obviously been shortened from age and reinforced.

Placerville was the first station getting telegraph service on the model railroad and it was a bit of a challenge to determine how the wires ran. From all the photos I looked at, it appears that there were two lines running through Placerville, but only one of the lines went into the station. The station line appears to come off a double insulator bracket and drops down the pole to another point at about station eave level. I it then goes horizontally into the front alcove of the station on the Ridgway side. The return line does the same thing back to the pole line. This was later in the life of the railroad. Earlier photos show a slightly different arrangement with, I think, four wires indicating two lines in the station.

I have been interested in what happens on loops such as Ophir and Gallagher. On Gallagher, the pole line clearly cuts off the loop and goes overland between the trestle by the road and the closest point on the higher line. Ophir appears to have four wires going to the station, underneath the ore tipple. I can’t tell for sure, but there appears to be wire lines cutting diagonally up the mountain between the low line and the high line in some photos. Up to that point, from Vance Jct. it appears to be a two line system. My conclusion is that they ran the two line system from where the diagonal wire line shows up in an out-and-back fashion to Ophir station. Same amount of wire but half the poles. Given the fairly frequent use of the telegraphone to report problems, cutting off these loops could result in some long hikes – particularly in bad weather.

It is amazing how my interest in telegraph lines has caused me to look at photos I have seen a million times and see new things. Any comments and insights would be most welcome.


EBT pole


RGS pole south of Peake - 16 feet tall


Placerville model


Poles with and without crossarms




Telegraphone stick