Re: Telegraph

These are interesting photos...

Depot Cable Pole pic at Ridgway shows (as near as I can tell) two wires cut in both directions with breakirons on the top and lower crossarms, pole pin positions to the depot cable, and two wires terminating on each end of the lower arm and going south.

The other photo taken farther south of Ridgway depot shows six wires on the lead, two on top arm in pole pin positions, and four on lower arm on the "east" side of the pole.

I surmise that the two RGS wires (RR and WU) that went on towards Placerville
were the two on the top arm, and the four that were on the lower arm south of the depot went on to Ouray. Two of these four wires were probably the Ouray loop of the WU wire that went on toward Durango via the RGS, and the other two probably were the Ouray branch loop of the D&RG RR wire that came from Grand Jct and went back to Montrose.

The Western Union would have been more likely to have run the WU way wire all the way from Grand Jct thru Montrose to Durango via Ridgway, loop to Ouray and then over the RGS line, so that if it went in trouble, it could have been grounded at any point along the way and worked back to one or the other of the WU relay offices at the ends in Grand Jct, Montrose or Durango. This was the usual way WU did this sort of thing when there were WU relay offices at either end that made it possible..

It is unlikely that terminal battery was supplied on any of these wires at
Ridgway, since that would have required a stable source of 60, 130 or 160 volt DC power either from rectifiers and AC mains or from a battery plant, and neither was likely to have been located at the Ridgway depot.

More likely the D&RG RR wires DS & message came from terminal battery at Grand Jct looped from Montrose to Ridgway and Ouray and then went to opposite teminal battery back at Montrose. Terminal battery was probably available from WU in Montrose, since the Marshall pass wires ended there. The two RGS wires may have taken terminal battery at Montrose as well, instead of Grand Jct.

I'm still digging for info on this. Fascinating stuff to me.