Telephone pole talk

[FJ and G]

As I was browsing through Trains magazine, Dec 04, I came across a picture of the City of San Francisco. Running alongside the track was a pole with 7 crossheads and 10 glass insulators on each. That's a heck of a lot of wire but that was 1949, common at the time, I understand.

Flash forward to about 1970, on page 38 of the SP Salad Special and we see telephone poles on each side of the tracks. One set consists of one crossarm and the other two. Glass beads addorn the crossarm but the wire is completely missing!

Why?

I suppose because radio communication had by then supplanted the telegraph!

And collectors had not yet raided the glass insulators (or hunters shot them off).

Such a variety of telephone poles. Something very elaborate and artistic for steam-era modelers and telephone poles without wire for no-nonsense modern-era prototypical modelers.

Frost heaves and other weather elements often leave some of the poles standing slanted. On some poles, the old wire hangs down to the ground, electrons no longer running thru it.

It would be nice to see more variety on layouts than the usual 2 or 3 crossmember poles that look so neat and tidy.

My first layout consisted of scratchbuilt O scale telephone poles, made from sapplings and little beads from Michaels with black thread strung thru it.

My 2nd layout used HO telephone poles with no lines in a forced perspective manner.

Both worked.

[Big_Boy_4005]

Good morning Dave. Now the poles are coming down altogether along most lines. The railroads do their signaling in other ways. I have heard, that as the lines fall out of use, the wires are cut down to avoid possible interference.

Even though my railroad is modern, I may still have the poles along parts of the line. Partly because I like the way they look, and partly because I own so many already.[swg]