Telephones in Layout room

[Bullitt406]

How are telephones in layout rooms set up?

Are they on dedicated lines from the phone company or are they powered from within the home on their own circuit?

It's definately a neat idea rather than shouting at a person 30 or more feet away.

Josh

[tstage]

Josh,

I don't know the answer to that but I bet a couple of wakkie-takkies would accompli***he same thing.

Tom

[Anonymous]

Unless you really want to operate with actual telephones, a much easier and less expensive way is with FRS radios. You can get a pair for $20-$30, they have many different channels, they are small, convenient, and can even have headphones.

BTW - from personal experience - don't go with the cheap-o walkie talkies you find at toy-stors for <$10 - they rarely work at all. FRS radios don't cost that much more, and have a range up to a couple of miles. The cheap ones - well, you'd be lucky to understand someone from across the room.

Just my $0.02

Rob

[Anonymous]

you can get talk abouts thay are 30 - 40 bucks and some have voice actavated head sets with them i am getting them to use we i go snowmobiling and i my use them in the layout room thay have a range of like 5 miles

[rrinker]

However, if you really want to fully simulate an older period when they didn;t have radios, the easiest thign to set up is a party line system. ALl the phones are connected together with a battery for power. A light at each phone could be controlled by the dispatcher to signal when he wants to talk to someone. You can make it more complex if you want, with various selectors and so forth to enable whatever sort of connection you want.
Or if you want to go back even further - sounders and keys and use a telegraph! [:D]

--Randy

[Bullitt406]

Is there a schematic online to show the party line with battery?

if I wanted to use walkie talkies I would, better yet to use my cell phones with unlimited mobile to mobile. but thanks.

josh

[cuyama]

Long-time telco company engineer Seth Neumann did a clinic on phones for model railroading at the Seattle NMRA convention. The slides from his clinic are available in the files section of the Operations Special Interest Group (Op SIG) YahooGroups list.

Getting to this information is a two-step process. First, if you are not already a member of the YahooGroups Op SIG list, you'll need to join by pointing your browser at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ry-ops-industrialSIG/

Then after joining, look through the "files" section for an article called:
Model Railroad Communications - small.pdf
phones for ops from PSX 2004

Regards,

Byron
http://www.modelrail.us

[orsonroy]

Party lines are the way to go for a fully-operational phone system in a layout. I have no idea on how to set one up, but luckily know the former head of the AT&T telephony museum. He's offered to install a full switchboard for me if I ever buy my dream basement!

Anyway, setting up station communications is actually pretty easy these days. Target has bare-bones corded phones for $20, and simple 2-way 22-channel radios for $15. For a layout with a full dispatcher's office, simple computer printers can be had on Ebay for $10, and can be hooked into a LAN for easy delivery of train orders to any station along the line (something I'd love to try out!). And any self-respecting telephony contractor can easily set up a party line in your house. He might look at you oddly, but it won't be that big a deal.

[rrinker]

At the club I used to belong to, we had a phone line set up fromthe office in back to up front, just a single line. Two old desk phones, the kind meant for this service, with no dials. But they had small magneto cranks on them, so you could ring the other party.

--Randy

[Zandoz]

Many of the newer crop of expandable cordless phones have an intercom feature that allows two or more of the phones to talk to each other without taking the outside line off hook.

[Bullitt406]

wow, thanks guys. Sounds like I have a new project on my hands.

Josh