I lived by the Burlington tracks and CNW growing up in the 60's - 80's. Chicago North Western had poles with glass insulators and bare copper wire but Burlington had none. I see lots of poles along tracks in southern Illinois but am not sure if they're still in use. Anyway, my question since I want to add these to my layout do they go along all tracks or just some? Also, if I remember correctly, they always appeared much shorter than electric & or phone poles.
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These are communication and power lines to power trackside signals. They were predominantly above ground on poles but later direct bury cables were utilized requiring less maintenance. So put them where you desire on your layout.
There is an old abandoned right of way near me that crosses a large piece of farmland. Beyond the property lines of what I am describing, all evidence of it has been removed, but the one fellow who lives on this bit, chose to leave the roadbed and ditches, no ballast or tracks, and every pole with their many insulators in place, across his property. Of course the copper wire is long gone, but the land owner is maintaining a bit of history showing a railroad ran here once. I'm sure when this man passes on, his kids will sell it all to some transplant that paid 4 times too much for it because he has the money and wants out of his metroplex nightmare of a big city, and he will bulldoze it flat.
Most of those wires belonged to Western Union. Usually the railroad had two pair, the dispatchers line and one other. They were at a particular location, as I recall lower arm, track side, closest to the pole and next pair out. At a derailment the signal guy would come out and clip on to these wires and hang a phone on the pole closest to the derailment. Usually the senior man at the derailment could be found on that phone. The signal cables were usually hung below the lowest cross arm. Most of the wire was not copper, it was copper weld. Copper coating on a steel core.
Depending on the era you model; short poles were used for telegraph lines and to carry a power line for line side signals. The more cross bucks carrying wires on a pole, the busier the mainline. The B&O Metropolitan branch had poles with 5 cross bucks back in the 1940s.
As a kid I used to frequently hang out at the B&O Washington branch mainline ( 2 tracks ), now owned by CSX. Those low poles also had 5 cross bucks and only some of the higher cross buck had wires, which I assume were live current for powering line side signals. The wires on the lower cross bucks were long gone. There were oodles of ceramic insulators that had fallen on the ground from the lower cross bucks. I wish I had gathered some up and saved them.
Short branches off the mainlines ,where only one train might traverse on a daily or every other day basis, didn't have a need for telegraph communication. Branches where there were a few trains daily were likely to have poles with a couple cross bucks for telegraph lines.
BTW - It was poles along the B&O's Washington branch that carried the very first telegram sent by Samuel Morse. The telegraph read " What hath God wrought." It was sent from the Library of Congress in Washington DC to the B&O's Mount Clair station in Baltimore .. now home of the B&O Railroad Museum .
Last Fall we took a train ride along the Lehigh Gorge in PA. I noticed such abandoned poles; now embedded with trees and other growth. It would be unique to model them and to apply weathering. Interestingly, some were leaning and it was a contrast to the fall foliage colors.
Not sure I can post a Google map picture and get in trouble with the OGR TOS. But I did a street view of Waverly VA. There are CSX tracks that parallel Rt 460 and you can see the old poles along the tracks. The wires are long gone and many poles have been taken down, but you can still see a few.
The 10' long wooden items that hold the insulators, and thence the wires, are called "arms."
If a pole line crosses another, and there is the necessity for arms at 90° to the main arms, those arms are called "cross arms."
The white signs at grade crossings that look like an "X" are called "cross bucks."
Couple of thoughts here:
This website is a treasure trove of information regarding historical electrical equipment.
George
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