Telegraph Pole Spacing

[Anonymous]

This weekend I pulled-up the telegraph poles I had installed along my
main in one sub-division because I didn't like the color and I've re-done
the poles with a better-looking wa***echnique.

Since I've gone this far with it I figured I'd make a better effort at the
proper spacing of railroad telegraph poles. Might anyone have some
ideas on what, if any, standards the railroads may have used for spacing
single cross-bar poles along their lines? I imagine it varied from
railroad to railroad, and I've found plenty of info so far on the internet
about how the poles were constructed, but nothing yet on their spacing.

[Anonymous]

it varied not only from railroad to railroad, but also within railroads as well. depending on the terrain, era, and otehr favtors, you could end up with poles 10' apart, 50' apart, or even 200' apart.

So if you want to be prototypical, just place then where you thing they need to be.

Jay

[jrbarney]

Ghighland,
NTDN already gave you a railroad answer, but you may also find the discussion in this earlier thread helpful:
<http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6156>
I vaguely remembered that the topic had been discussed before, so I used the Search the forums box at the top of this page and after a few mis-steps, located the earlier thread using the search term "pole spacing."
Bob

[dehusman]

Poles ranged from 25-40 poles per mile. They were used for distance measurement. A slow order might be from mile 450 pole 5 to pole 22. The poles in multiples of ten usually had some sort of marker on them, typically a stripe painted on them or an aluminum band nailed around them, one band for 10, 2 for 20, 3 for 30, etc.
On a model railroad it would be more effective if you compressed the distance. A typical spacing would be about 30 poles per mile or about 2 foot actual spacing. Even at 40 poles per mile, that would be a pole every 18" on a HO model. For better effect you might want to go with closer spacing like every 100 scale feet or actual foot.

Dave H.

[rogerhensley]

Bell Telephone Common Practices
City poles telephone:
75 ft on street 40' poles 6' in ground. Tel cable 18' off ground additional
40 inch minimum clearance to electric lines.

Rear yards: 30ft light duty poles. Usually every other yard. Cable height
varies 12-18ft depending on power share requirements.

Rural: 75-100 feet. Tel cable 18' off ground 40" clearance to electric
lines.

Poles by the Track
General practice was to have 40 poles to the mile. Each 4 poles is a tenth. And 1 pole length was considered 3 car lenghts. The last two facts were important to operatering personal when determiing where to find slow orders, changes in permanent track speeds, Limits, work orders, ect. Before radios the headend crew would count off the poles to determine when to slow down to let the tailend trainman get off the caboose to line back a siding switch to its proper position and get back on without stopping.

The pole alignment is a nominal 18 to 20 feet from the closest rail. The poles are set erect or with a slight pitch away from the track and have an average height of about 22 feet above grade... Where the lines cross a highway or a railroad track the height of the poles is gradually increased to provide minimum clearance under the lines: 18 feet for highways and 25 feet for railroad tracks... Real poles are spaced anywhere from 40 to the mile...to 26 to the mile... In model work, where distance is always a problem, a shortened spacing of about 80 scale feet is desirable.

I gathered this from several sources over the years.