Telegraphers Paralysis - More Railroad Focused Information

[NW Mailing List]

Herr Huddle and All the Ships at Sea:

For railroaders interested in this whole ball of wax, let me put a little finer point on the matter of railroads and wires.

1. Railroads had been affording right-of-way to telegraph companies ever since the first experimental telegraph line was constructed (1844, Baltimore to Washington, along the lordy B&O.)

2. The idea of creating a symbiotic relationship between telegraph lines + railroads, where both entities benefited, occurred in 1850 on the Erie RR (then named the New York & Lake Erie RR.) In that year Ezra Cornell (1807-1874, who endowed Cornell U.) was constructing a telegraph line westward from the Hudson River, and approached Charles Minot (1810-1866,) General Superintendent of the Erie, about doing a swap of right-of-way for communications. Minot (who was the father of the Train Order,) was a progressive type businessman, and bought into the idea. The agreement called for the railroad to grant Cornell's telegraph line an easement for constructing pole line along the right-of-way. In turn, the telegrpah company would provide the poles and wire and telegraph instruments which the railroad could use. The circuit would be dropped into each depot and the railroad's employees would act as business agents for sending and receiving the telegraph company's public message business. In e
 xchange, the railroad could use the wire (there was only a single wire, at first) for moving its own intelligence, and by agreement the railroad's business had priority over the telegraph company's public message business. The telegraph company also provided the "battery" to power the line, the creation of "the galvanic electric fluid" being a somewhat mysterious thing back then.

The following Autumn, 1851, Charles Minot used the newfangled telegraph thingie to send a message from his depot at Turners (now Harriman, NY) to the station agent at Goshen, NY, a dozen miles to the west: "Hold the train for orders." This allowed a much delayed westbound passenger train standing at Turners to proceed against the timetable schedule of a hopelessly delayed eastbound... and thus the Train Order was born, and railroads were free from the unbending iron shackels of "time card meets."

The Cornell-Minot deal of 1850 became the model for agreements between other railroads and other telegraph companies. In 1856, the plethora of small eastern telegraph companies were merved into Western Union and railroads were quick to implement such beneficial deals on their own properties.

It seems that the N&W's predecessor, the Virginia & Tennessee RR, had a similar agreement with the Lynchburg & Abingdon Telegraph Company (which company was later extended to Richmond & Bristol,) but I have found no information on the specifics.

Over time, as Western Union's business burgeoned, that Company built its own cross-country pole line independent of railroad rights-of-way. But it seems W.U. still had some circuits on N&W pole line, and was maintaining wire and telegraph instruments for the N&W, into the 1950s. (Does anyone know when the Western Union motor cars disappeared from the N&W ... ?)

Regardless of who owned the poles and who put up the wires, the N&W operated some of its circuits on its own, independently of W.U. These exclusive N&W circuits all hubbed into "GM Telegraph Office," on the ground floor of Old General Office Building, Roanoke. There was a Wire Chief and Test Board there, and "battery" was put on communications wires going in all four directions. (Almost certainly there was another Wire Chief at Portsmouth, with identical functions, but I have no information on that.) And, by the way, "GM" stood for General Manager's telegraph office, as the office was put there to handle the railroad's headquarters administrative traffic.

Electric (i.e. battery) track circuits for signaling purposes began coming on the property in 1906, and the railroad began using the telephone for train dispatching in 1912. Teletype made its advent in the 1940s. The telegraph went away about 1960. And printer circuits (pixel printers) showed up in the early or mid-1970s. At that point, there was nothing left for me to be interested in, so I sold out my fat portfolio of Virginian Ry Gold Bonds and bought my Turnip Ranch & Plantation ...

It may interest some to learn that the telephone was useless for train dispatching in its early days, as the amplitude of voice signals sent over wires was measured in milliwatts (thousandths of a watt,) and these signals could not be propagated reliably over the entire length of a railroad Division (100 to 130 miles.) The breakthrough came when Lee DeForest (1873-1961) invented his Aidion Tube, the first vacuum tube, in 1906. Very quickly, someone figured out how to use the Audion to amplify voice signals. And in 1909-1910 Western Electric Co. came out with a package of railroad train dispatching equipment which included the selective ringing of stations out along the line.

Only one thing to add, and that concerns the pipeline companies. Pipeline companies dispatched their lines by valving instructions sent over a telegraph wire strung between their pumping stations. The buried pipes were patrolled on foot (originally by mule) by pipeline walkers. These pipeline walkers carried a small portable telegraph set in their pocket, and if they found evidence of a leak, they went up a pole, cut their telegraph set in circuit with the telegraph line, and sent in a report to the office. We have evidence of this being done as late as 1957, just a couple miles from where I live near Harrisburg, Pa.

But pipeline companies were not in the business of building and operating telegraph lines, so many segments of their wire network were leased from the railroads, which had numerous crossarms and wires. When I was transferred from Philadelphia to Harrisburg in 1981, I made it a point to check the circuit assignments for all the wires passing through our interlocking and block signal towers, and I found railroad wires leased to the Tuscarora, the Buckeye and one other pipeline company ! Like railroads, the pipelines switched to radio, then microwave communication, and that was the end of the wires I loved so well !

I hope sifting through all this rambling jargon has not been tedious. If so, reach for your Delete Button.

-- abram burnett
Our Turnips are Annealed and Case Hardened