N&W Telephone Boxes

[nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org]

  Anyone remember those steel "T-Boxes" on the N&W?  They were about 
2'x2'x2' and fabricated from sheet steel.  Painted silver, they held a 
magneto, a selector (one side was "B" for Block Line, the other was "D" for 
Dispatcher's Line,) a push-to-talk button and a telephone handset.  They 
looked fairly new in the 1960s.

When I went to work in the early 1960s, they were ubiquitous... all over 
the N&W.  I can recall them in the late 1950s, too.  Matter of fact, in all 
my booming around the various divisions of the N&W, I never saw a wooden 
T-Box !

Now, my question is this...  When were they installed, supplanting the old 
wooden boxes?  In CTC territory, one might assume they were installed along 
with the CTC.  But I also worked in non-CTC territory, and they were there, 
too.

I checked Warden & Miller's book on N&W passenger trains post-1956, but 
could find them depicted in none of the photographs.

A quo ... ?

-- abe burnett