N&W depot communications wiring

[NW Mailing List]

Mr. Burnett labeled a photo of Mr. Akers, Agent-Operator - Rural Retreat, as follows:

8. 
 Desk-mounting base for the Chicago Railway Supply Co. telephone, which 
base accepts a pipe that extends upward, then outward, then downward to 
hold the transmitter (mouthpiece) in front of the speaker.

9.  
The gate-arm telephone ("scissors-phone")  mounted on the desk.  This 
would have been used for cutting in on the 
block line(s) and the message line.  It probably had its own oak jack 
box screwed to the desk top somewhere near the phone.  I am curious 
about how the Train Dispatcher "raised" (called) the individual stations
 on the telephone circuits.  Did he ring a combination of longs and 
shorts on some kind of annunciator bell (the bells ringing in all open 
offices simultaneously,) and the called operator answering when he heard 
the ring for his station?  Or did the Train Dispatcher have a 
"selective ringing" apparatus, which enabled  him to ring any station 
individually, without the bells going off at other stations?  (As I 
recall, the N&W didn't install telephones for train movement 
purposes until 1913, and Western Electric didn't market the "selective 
ringing" equipment until 1917.)

...

11. 
 The city phone directory, no doubt tied to a nail in the wall with a piece of 
train order twine... as most were.  The "city phone" is not visible in 
the photograph.  (It would be interesting to know when Rural Retreat received a city phone.)


If the Chicago Railway Telephone is used for the dispatcher, message, and/or block lines, a second Western Electric telephone was not needed for the same purpose.  Item 11, the telephone book, indicates that Rural Retreat had a local telephone service.  My opinion is that the Western Electric candlestick phone labeled as 9 was the outside line.  Most small exchanges in that era did not have a dial service; connections were made by the telephone operator at the exchange.

For what it's worth --and happy new year,

Frank Scheer
f_scheer at yahoo.com
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