N&W in 1910--Telephone

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Bluefield Daily Telegraph
August 31, 1910

TELEPHONE TO TAKE PLACE OF TELEGRAPH
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First Wire Between the East and the South Being Removed After Sixty Years of Service
    Old galvanized wire No. 5, now rust-eaten and ready to fall to decay, the first of the telegraph wires to respond to the soughing winds of the unbroken southern forests, the original wire connecting the east and the south, and which was strung between Lynchburg, Va., and Atlanta, Ga., during the construction of the Virginia and Tennessee Railway, now nearly sixty years since, is at last nearing the end of its existence.  This faithful old wire, which was strung when the Civil war was in the incubator, and which was used later to transmit the pathetic messages of that memorable conflict between brothers of a common country, was removed between Atlanta and Bristol, along the line of the southern [sic] Railway, in 1902*.  A section of the same wire was left intact at that time along the line of the Norfolk and Western Railway, between Bristol and Lynchburg.
    Recently Western Union linemen have been busy with the task of tearing down and removing this faithful old servant of two generations ago.
    Rust-eaten and robbed of every vestige of galvanized coat, it snaps in two as the linemen pull at it in removing it from the insulators.  As one of the linemen expressed it, "It tells of the departed glory of the Morse system of telegraph, for its removal is being followed by the installation by the Norfolk and Western Railway Company of a complete system of modern telephones, which are to take the place of the telegraph system of dispatching trains."
    The new system of dispatching trains is already in effect between Roanoke and Glade Springs, Va., a distance of 120-miles, and within the next two weeks the system will have been extended to Bristol.  The system of telegraphing train orders will in all probability be eliminated by this new process.  However, the telegraph will be retained as a supplementary system for use in the case of emergency.
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*Last numeral was indistinct on microfilm.  The best interpretation is shown.

Gordon Hamilton
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