N&W depot communications wiring

[NW Mailing List]

This is very late response, but since I have no  expertise in depot communications wiring, I stayed out of the discussion.  However, there is one detail where I can add a bit of information.  If the subject photo is Link's NW3, with Humphries on the left and another man on the right holding some papers, this is likely B. N. Cliff, an N&W yard engineer or engine watchman, according to a database of Link's negatives.  This same person also appears in other Link photos taken in Waynesboro (NW22-NW24) under the same name.

Dave Stephenson

--- On Thu, 1/3/13, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:

From: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Subject: Re: N&W depot communications wiring
To: "NW Mailing List" <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Date: Thursday, January 3, 2013, 2:34 PM

Abram,
Thank you for this great, detailed, information.  Is it possible that any of the items you mention as missing from the BC photograph can be seen in this photo from AY, Rural Retreat?
 
Frank Akers
www.theruralretreatdepot.com




From: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
To: N&W Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Sent: Thu, December 27, 2012 7:38:50 PM
Subject: Re: N&W depot communications wiring


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Dr. Scheer inquires about the photo taken in N&W "BC" Telegraph Office at Waynesboro.  Here are a few thoughts:

1.  Troy Humphries (a 1941-hire, as I recall) is the telegraph operator pictured with his back to the camera.  I talked to him about the photo several times in the 1970s.

2.  Specifically, I asked Troy for the identity of the "Conductor with waybills."  He laughed and said that man who was a C&O Car Inspector and Link, needing a prop, asked him to pose in the photograph.  Troy did not know his name.

3.  As to the three Unit Jack Boxes on the wall.  On the 1-C, 1-D and 1-F models, there are SIX internal fuses, three for each side of the line.  Each side of the line is protected by one carbon-block fuse (slide-in mount,) one 4 inch round phenolic cartridge type fuse with screw terminal ends, and one
 2  1/2 inch round phenolic cartridge type fuse which snaps into clips.  The designer was obviously concerned about lightening protection!  The round phenolic fuses are of the Buss brand.  I have seen small cardboard shipping containers holding about a dozen of the carbon-block fuses, but I never saw the phenolic fuses in a shipping container.

4.  The Unit Jack Boxes use the 1/4 inch pin jacks, which were not patented until 1902.  They were designed to be used for either telephone or telegraph work (telephones use two wires, but the telegraph uses only one wire with an earth return.)  You are right in stating that, when used on telephone circuits, two boxes were used "in tandem," one for each wire of the telephone pair.  I personally removed 16 of these Unit Jack Boxes from "HJ" Hager Tower in Hagerstown before its demolition in 1983.  They were used on the N&W's circuits into HJ, and the Unit Jack
 Boxes on telephone circuits were set up on the "tandem" principle, while on the Morse circuits only one Unit Jack Box was used on each circuit.  Of course, all the circuits are identified by paper tags slipped into tag holders on the front of jack panels, so it was easy to sort out the Morse vs. the telephone circuits.

Before the invention of the 1/4 inch pin jack and the Unit Jack Box, Morse telegraph circuits broke through something called a "peg type switchboard."  I'll attach a photo of the "peg board" which was removed from the N&W Troutville station at the time of its closure.  It was given to me by Troy Humphries, who removed it.  I think it was an original installation of the Shenandoah Valley RR at the time the Troutville station was built in the 1880s.

Troy told me that, in his time, there were three Morse telegraph wires over the entire Shenandoah Division (Hagerstown to Winston-Salem.)  The Western
 Union wire was Wire #102, and I think the N&W's wires were nomenclatured #1 and #3... but I would have to find my notes from 40 years ago to be sure.  Without doubt, there were more telegraph wires over the Division prior to the installation of telephones, and it is probable that a number of the Morse wires were simply changed over to handle newfangled telephone circuits.

It is my conjecture that, by the time the N&W installed telephones on the Shenandoah Valley, the 1/4 inch pin jack and the Unit Jack Box were already standard equipment in the telephone business.

Do you have a date for the installation of the first telephones on the Shenandoah Division?  The years 1912 or 1913 come to mind, but I have no notes on the subject.

5.  The wire which is visible to the left of the Seth Thomas clock is what was called "twisted pair."  I have checked with signalmen from the 1950s who worked with these things, and
 here is what they report:  Telephone and telegraph circuits were carried on either #8 or #9 open wire on the pole line.  The open wire met the "drop" wire into the station at the "office pole" (the pole closest to the office.)  The drop wire was #14 gauge twisted pair single conductor with a rubber insulation and was connected  to the bare line wire with a copper crimp sleeve.  The drop wire then went into a wooden box on the pole, officially called the "Dry Spot Box" but in the vernacular known as the "bird box," where it passed through a lightening arrestor, and thence down into the station.  (Teletype circuits, where used, were carried on #6 wire, usually on the top crossarm.)
  
6.  It is unfortunate that, in this photograph, we cannot see the jack boxes surface mounted on the desk and used by the operator for (a) cutting in his telephone headset onto the various
 telephone circuits, and (b) for cutting in his Telegraph key into the several Morse circuits.  Although furnished in steel in later years (late 1940s) by the Fahnestock Company, those at "BC" Waynesboro were probably the older oak Western Electric jack boxes.  They were furnished in both 3-hole and 6-hole configuration, and for larger facilities they were furnished with 12 holes in a 6-over-6 configuration.  But beware... different jacks were used for telephone and Morse circuits.  Jacks for telephone circuits were "bridging" jacks, and those for Morse circuits were regular "series" jacks.  With a little work, you can covert a telephone jack to work on a Morse circuit, but you cannot convert a Morse jack to work on a telephone circuit.   If you need a jack box for the Museum's telegraph office at Boyce, "apply to the undersigned"  :-)

< The 3-hole oak jack boxes measure 4.5 wide x 2.25 high x 6.25
 deep.  The 6-hole oak jack boxes measure 7.25 wide x 2.25 high x 6.25 deep.  The 6-over-6 double oak jack boxes measure 7.25 wide x 4.75 high x 6.25 deep.  Can supply photos if you need them >>

7.  As to your question concerning the item at the very top of photograph, mounted on a diagonally braced shelf...  I think that is probably the Block Indicator, not the steel case for holding the three dry cell batteries operating the local side of the telephone equipment.  Perhaps someone can check a good,clear print of the photograph at the Link Museum.  The dry cell telephone batteries required periodic change-out, and I do not think they would have been mounted so inaccessibly high.  All those I ever saw were mounted either on the side of the operator's table, or under it.  A position up high over all the other apparatus is exactly where you would expect to find the Block Indicators, where, with just
 a glance, the operator could tell if either a northward or a southward train were close.

Block Indicators served to give the operator warning of the close approach of a train.  They worked off the contacts of the track relays which, of course, says that there were no Block Indicators prior to the installation of the track circuits associated with an automatic block signal system.  On single track, there was one indicator for each direction of approach.  On double track, there was an indicator for each track, showing the approach of trains running with the current of traffic.  Block Indicators were of two types:  electro-magnet and electric lamp.  

The electro-magnetic type indicator had a rotating disc behind a glass window, mounted at its center on a spindle, with one half of the disc painted red, the
 other half white.  The disc rotated behind the glass window.  If no train were approaching, the disc rotated on its spindle so that the white half showed through the window; if a train were "in the block," the disc rotated so that its red half showed. The only places I ever saw the electro-magnetic Block Indicators were at Bassett and Salem.  

The electric lamp Block Indicators, on the other hand, were more typical in my time on the N&W.  They worked by a small electric lamp behind a glass "jewel," which was usually green in color.  If the lamp were lit, there was no train in the block; if the lamp were dark, a train was "on the approach."

I will attach a photo of two N&W Block Indicators of the electric lamp type.

8.  As to the specifics of the telephone arrangements in the "BC" photograph, I am unable to help you.  Being a telegrapher, those newfangled telephone thingies just never caught
 my interest and I never paid much attention to them...

You asked for the time, and I told you how to build a watch.  Forgive !

-- abram Burnett
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