I noticed that the operator at Bangor sent the telegram to the relay office at Portland at 9.00 a.m., and the reply from New York came via Portland at 1.00 p.m. Bangor didn't have a direct wire to New York, and this message probably passed through one or two more relay offices on the way over and back. The relay operators would pick up messages from the message wire, separate from the train dispatcher's wire, and hold them until they had a bunch to pass to another office. Portland probably sent this with a few more to a relay operator in Hoboken, who then sorted out the reservation messages and passed them as a bundle to New York, maybe every hour or half hour. The "Sent by" and "Received by" blocks on the telegram were the telegraphers' "sines," or their individual ID's on the wire. The first one was sent from Bangor by RAD and received at Portland by OP. OP is a common abbreviation for "operator," so it is possible that they used a generic sine for the "op" at Portland. The reply came back the same way, but was received at Bangor by VA, who was probably Agent V. Arnts. Gordon The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List Sponsored by the ELH&TS http://www.elhts.org ------------------------------
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