The telegraph system did not work the way the telephone systems of today work. Telegraph lines ran from point A to point B. At locations where other telegraph lines jointed the main telegraph line the messages where relayed. The operator on a side line sent a message to the operator at the point where his line end and their was another line. The operator's at these locations where two or more telegraph lines came together where called relay operators. The relay operators took messages received from one telegraph line and fowarded it to another station or relay operator on the other telegraph line. The telegraph lines where long gone when I went to work on the EL. In 1978 after gettting ConJobed I went to work on the Alliance Division of the Burlington Northern. The telegraph message lines where in use on the division until the middle of Septbember 1978. Since the telegraph was being phased out I did not have to learn how to telegraph when I hired out as an operator. The Alliance Divison at that time was like a big letter Y. The mainline came from Lincolin, NE to Alliance. There was a relay operator at Lincolin and Alliance. The two sides of the letter Y where the north line through Gillette, Wyoming to Billings Montana and the South Line through Casper, Wyoming to Lureal, MT. There was a relay operator at Billings and Casper, Wy. IIRC the north telegraph line split at Gillette, Wy. Stations from Gillette east sent there messages to Alliance Relay. Stations north of Gillette sent their messages to Billings. The relay operators at Casper handled the messages from the Colorado and Southern. The C&S telegraph line was carried on the pole line from Wendover to Billings. Was a long time ago and sort of foggy now. When the telegraph line was taken out and before that use operators that where not telegraph qualified when we wanted to send a message used the following procedure. We wrote the message on a BN telegraph form. For example the roadmaster might be requesting a work train. We would write or type out the message on the telegraph form. It would be addressed to the Chief Dispatcher, Crew Office and Trainmaster. We then called the Alliance relay office, tell them we had a 3 copy message and read them the message. The Alliance relay operator would give me his intatals once he had the message complete on a telegraph form. He made an orginal and three copies on his typewritter. There was a messangers job on at Alliance each trick. The messanger ran the messages and delivered to each office on a route that took him through out the whole terminal each hour. If I wanted to send a message to St Paul I gave that to Alliance Relay and it was fowarded from relay office to relay office until it was delivered to the general office building in St Paul. We also had interconnecting lines with other carriers. If I wanted to send a wire to the UP agent at Fort Collins I called Alliance relay, who fowarded it to Omaha Relay and it went to the UP Omaha relay who then fowarded it down the line. It might have been labor intensive, but we could send a message to any open railroad station in North America. I know BN is a bit off topic but it is the only hands on experance I had with how the relay system worked. Bob Stafford The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List Sponsored by the ELH&TS http://www.elhts.org ------------------------------
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