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.

[mcouvillion]

FJ and G,

I purchased a pack of Rix telegraph poles and cross-arm kits several months ago while in Evansville, Indiana (home of Rix Products). I think they are really neat, having assembled them with three arms each. The SP main (old Sunset Route) by my boyhood home had telegraph poles until the late 70s, when the wire was cut down and most of the poles taken up. I say most, 'cause there's still one next to the entrance to my parent's driveway, with a few insulators still attached! It had been hidden by an old tree, which gave up the ghost last year. I put a ladder up to the cross-arms a few years ago, and was scared to death that the whole thing was going to fall, as the wood is in REALLY bad shape! Didn't get close enough to get the insulators.

About 14 years ago, Model Railroader published a simple computer program in Basic called a "Telephone Pole Rule", actually something that would print a ruler on tractor-feed printer paper to give you the prototypical spacing of the poles at the proper distance from the edge of the track. I programmed it, then enhanced it so that I did not need to review the specific magazine article to know what the program did. Worked great! I think I still have it, and all of the other programs they printed, also enhanced, somewhere on my computer. I hope to use the Rix poles on at least one module of our club layout. I'll look for the programs and post a list of what is available, if anyone is interested. I ran it on QBasic, and they ran just fine.

Mark C.

[chutton01]

Actually, from where I type telephones poles are practically everywhere (there's one right outside my window). Of course, these carry Telephone, Electric Power Lines, and Cable lines. On Long Island, in Jersey, in Westchester, Conneticut, Pennsylvania, there must be 100s of thousands (if not millions) of poles - just not necessarily along the Railroad ROWs (or, if along the ROWs, not necessarily used by the railroad itself - just an utility easement). Even in New York City, which everyone usually thinks does not allow Telephone poles (and it doesn't - not in Manhattan or parts of the Bronx), there are thousands of Telephone poles in the rest of the boroughs (proof: http://www.forgotten-ny.com/LAMPS/tpolelamps/tpole.html ).
Now telegraph poles - OK, you got me there...

[cacole]

There are still rows of poles on both sides of the UP line between Tucson and Picacho, Arizona. One side is obviously for the Centralized Traffic Control, signals, and electric turnout controls, because lines drop off at control boxes along the line at every target signal or turnout. The poles on the other side of the track have more wires strung on them, but their purpose is unknown. These wires do not appear to have anything to do with the railroad.

[Jetrock]

One thing I always notice on long train trips are the number of totally decayed, broken, vandalized and otherwise weather-beaten telephone poles at trackside. I suppose a modern modeler could model these beat-up, worse-for-wear poles for a nice but still relatively simple piece of lineside detail.

If I were to do such a thing, I'd probably use some cheap wooden dowels (I'd recommend buying a package of long cotton swabs, the kind with wooden applicator sticks) and dye them an appropriate sickly grayish-brownish-black, snap a few, dunk a few in water and let them warp, and otherwise abuse and berate them before applying the Rix crossarms (snipping off a few of the insulators to represent breakage/pilferage) and sinking them trackside.

I'll have to pay particular attention to lineside poles, since I plan on hanging trolley wire from some of them! 3/32" or 1/8" solid steel piano wire makes a nice sturdy trackside pole that won't bend under tension, although I suppose guy wires are also prototypical!