Wire 26, PRR "UD" Harrisburg to N&W "GM" Roanoke

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My friend, Paul Wills, is a Communications Engineer by trade and training. I came to know him 40+ years ago when we both worked at 30th Street Station, Philadelphia. He is the engineer who installed the communications for Amtrak's CTEC, the train dispatching system for the entire so-called "Northeast Corridor."  Paul has served a number of times as National President of the Telephone Collectors of America. He is also a big time collector... not of dinky little telephone desk sets, but of things like telephone central office switch gear and long-distance Carrier equipment. He also has an operating Morse Telegraph in his house, so you know he is a good fellow, indeed !

Today Paul contacted me and advised that he had found, in the 1970 PRR's communications files, a listing of Telegraph Wire Assignments west of Harrisburg. One of the wires was a direct Telegraph wire to the N&W at Roanoke. It was the No. 26 Wire and ran from "UD," the PRR Philadelphia Division Message Office at Harrisburg, down the Cumberland Valley RR through Lemoyne, Carlisle, and Shippensburg to Hagerstown, and thence was turned over to the N&W. This was not a "Division grade" wire, but a through circuit for important business. My guess is that the wire was looped into N&W Vardo at Hagerstown, for handling reports between the two railroads at that point. Without doubt the wire terminated at N&W's "GM" Telegraph Office in the ground floor of the Old General Office Building in Roanoke. ("GM" stood for the General Manager's Telegraph Office.)  Paul said that the entry for this wire in the 1970 PRR document had been erased, which means the Wire was no longer in service.  Things were g
 oing to data circuits by then, you know, via AT&T lines, and railroads were trying to get out of maintaining pole lines.

I am confident this wire was not dropped into the way stations on the Shenandoah Division, as those stations had only three positions on their jack boxes. Those three spaces were for Wire 1, the Train Dispatcher's Wire; Wire 2, the Division Message Wire; and Wire 3, which was the Western Union Wire. (This information from Troy Humphries, who was a 1940 or 1941 hire Telegraph Operator/Agent on the Shenandoah Division.)

No doubt the N&W had other "Through Wires." But the only one I know by name was the "Cincinnati Wire" which ran from GM Roanoke westward to "PD" office NYC Cincinnati, "SG" Office B&O Cincinnati and "GC" Cincinnati Union Terminal office.

(In case you were not aware, a Telegraph circuit functioned with only ONE wire.  The earth served for the other "wire" of the circuit.  Telephones, of course, require two wires for operation.  So the "26 Wire" was indeed a single conductor, not a pair.)

    -- abram burnett
Warlord of the Turnip Patch