A trivia question that has been driving me nuts: the "power poles" along railroad tracks are shorter than regular poles elsewhere in the community. Why is this? Any help with this question would be most gratefully received.
Thanks!
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John:
George, many years ago I climbed those railroad poles and repaired the phone communications of the Great Northern in Idaho, Washington and Mt. Those poles contain telephone and semaphore circuits. Most maintenance had to be done from motor cars and we were not equipped to handle very long poles easily. So the poles were usually about 20 foot high and set fairly close together and close to the rails. They had zero connections to utility company lines or telephone company lines. The phone lines had very little voltage but were twisted every couple of hundred feet to reduce electromagnetic interference. The semaphores used up to 600 volts and on wet days we would sometimes get nicked in an ear by a semaphone line. You always remembered those days as well as the days you fell down a 20-30 foot pole because the wood was rotten at the top and your climbing hooks "kicked out". I suspect that in 1996 most railroads don't use those old systems anymore and rely on radios, satellites, and common carriers for communication. Even in 1959 most of the techniques were thirty years behind the times. All my relatives (father, grandfather, - railroad family) were upset when I quit climbing poles and went to work for some upstart computer company called IBM. They told me in 1959 that the Wall Street Journal said, "the world needs a fixed number of computers and after they are built, IBM will probably fad away." You can guess what happened to me. I could afford to retire in style at age 53 and I did.
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Barney:
I am a communications field manager for one of the major railroads. I enjoyed reading John's answer to George's question about the pole line. I'm sure it was 30 years behind in '59, the amazing thing is we just stopped using the "open wire" communications lines two years ago. These lines were used by our dispatchers to talk to operators and field personnel along the right of way. The signal (now called "train control") department still have their wires on the pole line. Most of these wires use low voltage to control the signals, but sometimes there is power, usually 110V, but can be as high as 7700 volts. We use some of the most modern technology available for communications, especially in the data sphere. And at the same time we are still wrenching use out of systems that have been in place for decades.
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Don:
George, I think the main reason the poles are shorter is that they are not "power poles" supporting wires carrying electric power. The wires supported by these poles carry communications services (voice and data--earlier telegraph, teletype and telephone) and signal and electric-switch controlling circuits. All are low voltage applications. Thus, there's no need to go to the extra expense (in the interest of safety) of keeping them so high that they'd be out of reach of any but the most determined and well-equipped trespasser. It's an increasingly obsolete system that has been very widely replaced by microwave, buried fiber optic cable and, in some applications, satellite communications circuits.