Trains and Communication
Dutchess Rail Trail sign about Communications. CLICK HERE for larger view
If you look closely off to the sides of the Rail Trail, you
might spot old utility poles. Some of them date back to
the time of the original railroads in the 1800s and were
first used to transmit telegraph messages. Continuous
railroad rights-of-way connecting villages and city
centers made excellent corridors for telegraph,
telephone and electrical lines.
Maybrook Line train with utility poles to the left.
Photo: B.L. Rudberg collection
Pole, crossbar and insulators
Photo: Dutchess County
Planning and Development
Samuel F. B. Morse, a famous resident of the Town of Poughkeepsie, is well known for
his work with telegraphy. The telegraph allowed communication before there were
telephones or cell phones, using electrical impulses transmitted through a wire. The
impulses were sent based on a system of dots and dashes, which were code for letters
and numerals. This system is better known as Morse Code.
Samuel Morse, developer of the single-wire telegraph
and “Morse” code, c.1840s
Collection of the Locust Grove Estate
Telegraph patent model
Collection of the Locust Grove Estate
Morse built his first commercial telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
in 1844. At the time, the average cost to string a mile of line was $150 - but this did not
include land rights. Land rights or “right of way” to plant the telegraph poles would add
greatly to the cost of infrastructure.
A solution to the right of way problem appeared when the Delaware and Hudson Canal
Company offered to donate use of its right of way for use by the telegraph lines as well.
The idea of using “existing utility corridors,” as they would be called today, was so
practical that soon nearly all telegraph lines started to follow the railroad tracks that
were crisscrossing the country at the same time. An additional benefit of routing wires
next to the tracks was efficiency of access. We often forget the roads at the time were
either nonexistent or abysmal, making the siting of wires in this way the perfect solution
to fast access for repair.
The use of telegraphy also allowed communication between the train dispatcher, who
was usually many miles away, and the whole rail system. The telegrapher was the eyes
and ears of the train dispatcher. Each small town along a rail line, about ten miles apart,
had a depot. Most towns had an agent or agent-telegrapher. Some had a telegrapher
on each shift around the clock.
The New York and Lake Erie Rail Road was one of the first railroad lines to be included
in the telegraph network, with the result that the first railroad telegraph message in the
world was sent and received in nearby Orange County, New York in January of 1851.
By 1925 the speed and capabilities of the telephone had such a dramatic effect on the
adoption of telephone train dispatching that the mileage dispatched by telephone
exceeded the mileage that was dispatched by telegraph. But the telegraph had worked
well for train dispatching and was used by some lines until the 1960s. In the early
transition from telegraph to telephone, horses powered the unraveling of the new wire
once workers attached the wire to the insulators on the poles. Today, many rail lines are
putting fiber optic communication lines underground alongside the tracks, so these
telegraph/telephone poles are becoming obsolete.
The glass or porcelain caps you can still see on
some poles along rail lines are called “insulators.”
Insulators were first used extensively in the mid1840s with the invention of the telegraph. They
were necessary to prevent the electrical current
passing through the wire from grounding out on
the pole and making the line unusable. The first
insulators were a beeswax soaked rag wrapped
around the wire. They worked well in the dry
laboratory but soon broke down when exposed to
the weather.
Intact insulators on a telephone/telegraph pole.
Photo: Katie Carille
The next concept was a glass knob, which looked much like a bureau knob one might
still find on antique furniture today, mounted on a wood or metal pin. From this evolved
the pin style insulator, which had no threading inside the pinhole. It was cemented to the
pin by driving it down on the pin with a mallet on an asphalted rag. This was not a
perfect answer because the weather worked on the rag; and eventually the insulator
would work loose and pop off the pin, allowing the wire to contact a grounding surface.
Insulators with threading became the preferred method.
Inevitably, as telegraph lines traced the westward expansion of railroad lines across the
states, glass manufacturers began to create many new designs in an effort to secure a
niche in the rapidly growing insulator market. Thus, by the advent of the Civil War in
1860, original insulator models could be found in both porcelain and glass. While glass
was initially more common for telegraph and telephone line insulation, porcelain would
later gain a firm foothold as the preferred material for insulating high voltage power
lines. Over time, glass manufacturers would produce hundreds of designs; millions of
insulators were made of glass and porcelain, then later of rubber, plastic and other
composite materials.
From left to right: Hemingray-19; an
unnamed aqua insulator embossed with
the date October 8th, 1907; and a green
Lynchburg No. 36, c. 1924.
Photo: Dutchess County Planning and
Development
For more information:
Samuel Morse: lgny.org
Insulators: LynchburgInsulators.com