Re: Telegraph restoration

As to the use of a mainline sounder in the resonator instead of a "local" sounder....this was pretty common all over the D&RGW in the last years of Morse use. It was an economy measure to avoid having to maintain local battery at stations where there was no commercial AC power to run rectifiers for a local circuit, and in fact to avoid having to provide any local power source at all. By that time, the Morse wires were sectioned in shorter districts where mainline sounders worked fine for the most part and the sensitive mainline relays were really no longer necessary, although some were left as is (as was the case in Chama) and regular mainline call sounders were never installed. It was probably pretty quiet in that depot most of the time so if someone called "CH" on the wire that was not cut in on the master set with the resonator, the mumble of the relay in circuit could be plainly read and responded to.