Re: Telegraph

RGS telegraph wires...

One hobby of mine has been researching old pole head diagrams and telegraph wire information along
various Narrow gauge and standard gauge railroad routes...

On the D&RGW, the information already presented is correct. Wires RR 1, WU 8 (later 108), WU 3 (103),and WU 9 (109)
went from Alamosa to Durango, ending in WU Durango for terminal battery.

In the late 1930's wires 3 and 9 were reworked on the line, cleaned up and transposed for voice service
and used for the Dispatcher's telephone. Wires 1 (DS wire) and 108 (WU way wire) remained as Morse wires until the end. 108 originally terminataed at Silverton (SV)

The RGS is still a "work in progress" for me...

We know there were two Morse wires from Ridgway to Durango. No telephone line, although
Telegraphones were used by clipping onto one or the other of the Morse wires when needed.
Pole line was mostly single poles, 30 poles per mile, with two brackets, crossarms only in some
places.

Wires "cut in" using "break irons" at the points where the circuits needed to go into an office.
This was a short iron bar with two steel pins and wood cobs with insulators on the ends, mounted on top of a
crossarm in a normal pin position. The two insulators on the cobs were in line with the wire to
be "broken" and the bridle wires to the office attached to bring both directions of the wire into
the office via a cable from the depot cable pole to the building and into the switchboard.

On the RGS, one wire was probably a Railroad wire, and one
certainly was a Western Union wire. I surmise these wires both took Terminal Battery at Durango WU and
probably Grand Junction WU, being carried on to JN on the D&RG pole line from Ridgway. The WU way wire
may even have looped to Ouray from Ridgway.

I haven't finished researching the line between Grand Jct and Ouray yet...the line joined the original pole
line via Marshall Pass from Salida at Montrose , and there were at least three or four Morse wires on that line...
There were never any telephone circuits on the Marshall Pass line.

The railroad wire certainly cut in at all the stations along the RGS line. The WU wire may not have.
(Still digging for this info, and I do not know the wire numbers yet either....)

A Morse wire can't "branch" without an automatic repeater at the branch point...Normal practice was to
"loop" a wire up a branch to provide service to the end of the branch, and not use repeaters which were
a maintenance headache..

In RGS case, Vance Jct probably was the point where the RGS wires looped to Telluride.
There would have then been FOUR wires on the
branch line from Vance Jct to Telluride, one loop for each Morse wire. The Western Union way wire
certainly was carried into Telluride as it was a larger town than any of the others except Durango.

I do have the wire calls for the offices on the RGS:
Ridgway WY Placerville PV Vance jct MI Telluride DO
Rico RO Dolores DJ ( Mancos is unknown, maybe MN?)
Hesperus HS Durango DX