From the Chief Dispatcher

 Hello everyone. I see pumpkins and witches are showing up in the stores and on people's lawns so it must be time for my fall update. Much has happened since my last one in June so here goes.

Weekly telegraph sessions continued at Calgary’s Heritage Park on Tuesdays and Saturdays with members staffing Midnapore and Laggan stations. The normal course of things had us demonstrating Morse code and sending “name grams” down the wire. We also hooped up train orders to each passing train.

On Sep 14 and 15 members from MTC Calgary, and two from MTC Edmonton, manned three of Heritage Park's four former Canadian Pacific Railway stations for the parks Railway Days event. We did the usual agent operator sorts of things. Members of the junior telegraph club helped at the stations and hosted the telegraphy component of the children’s railway challenge at Shepard station. MTC Calgary members also staffed the millers cabin on the promenade which was set up as a commercial telegraph office. Information on the Alberta line project was prominently displayed.

We closed out our weekly sessions on Thanksgiving weekend. Saturday practices will likely continue
in Midnapore station until it gets too cold.

A most exciting possibility for the telegraph club will be handling telegrams during Heritage Park’s annual Christmas days, this year occupying the three weekends in December prior to Christmas Day. Telegrams to Santa, called Santagrams by Western Union, were once a popular and lucrative undertaking for telegraph companies.

To my knowledge Christmastime telegrams have not previously been offered at Heritage Park and we are looking forward to bringing something new to the park.

MTC Calgary finally received its chapter charter from the international office of the MTC. Having this will allow us to more easily incorporate under the Alberta Societies Act. This is an important step if we want to seek financial help from any level of government in covering some of the costs of the line project, which could be substantial.

And speaking of the line project a brief update is in order. Both the Days of Yore and Railway Days events provided great opportunities to showcase the project with seven and six active stations online respectively. Interest in the line project is growing. Currently the project has five active stations; two at Heritage Park, the museum in Didsbury, AB, our MTC agent in Cardston, AB, and the Dispatcher's station in the Wire Chief's office. Very soon the SS Sicamous in Penticton BC will join the circuit as well. At last count we have more than two dozen other museums wanting to join the fun. This is truly amazing and our wire chief, Kevin Jepson, is to be commended on a job well done! Kevin will be offering a more substantial project update very soon.

That’s all I have for now. I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.

73
Ken Ashmead, President
Morse Telegraph Club, Calgary "CG" Chapter

 

 

Book Review "Tales of the Telegraph" 1899

 This is another review by Jim Haynes from the old Telegraph Lore website.

A PDF of the book is available at the Internet Archive here.

Enjoy

73
Ciao
KJ

"Tales of the Telegraph"

The Story of a Telegrapher's Life and Adventures in Railroad Commercial and Military Work

by Jasper Ewing Brady, 1st Lieutenant 19th United States Infantry, Late Captain Signal Corps U.S. Volunteers

Published by Doubleday & McClure Co. 1899

This book is a collection of stories from a lifetime of employment in the telegraph business in the late 19th century. The span of jobs held by Mr. Brady covers just about every type of landline Morse telegraph work imaginable. Reading this book should give the reader a pretty good picture of employment in the telegraph business in the 19th century, particularly in the south and western areas of the United States.

Brady started out as a boomer telegrapher straight out of telegraph school. The first few chapters of the book contain various stories and incidents while working various railroad telegraph offices. The quantity and destructiveness of the various railroad accidents he describes led me to believe that this was a work of fiction, until later I read that 2000 railroad related deaths per year was not uncommon in the late 19th century. The next phase of his career was spent doing commercial work. I have never found a description of working quadruplex Morse circuits until reading this book.

After tiring of commercial work, Brady decided to return to the railroad, this time with aspirations of becoming a dispatcher. Interrupting the flow of the book, Brady did a fine job with a chapter describing the role of the dispatcher in the running of railroad. He then continued on with several chapters covering various train dispatcher stories.

Brady then suddenly decides to join the military, hoping to quit the telegraph for good. He succeeds for a year, and then he took an assignment working as a telegrapher for an isolated Texas military camp. The next chapter is a detour to a story he picked up from one of the older soldiers while out west. The story is about an operator who literally dies at the key. The remaining chapters conclude Brady's military career including work as a censor of telegraph traffic while stationed in Florida during the Spanish-American War. This book is excellent reading for fans of Morse telegraphy. Brady gives a good overview of three important phases of telegraphic communications: railroad dispatching, commercial, and military.

 

"After Action Report" railway Days 2024

 

After Action Report Railway Days
Heritage Park
Sep 14-15

This event was very successful with 6 stations active on the Alberta MTC Line!

The six stations included all three railroad stations at Heritage Park, my Dispatcher display in a standalone office in a small cabin on site, the Didsbury Museum, and a station in Cardston Alberta.

This is the map of the MTC Line during the event:

Three experienced members were also working the lines: Bill Wilson and Cliff Metherell were working in the Midnapore and Laggan stations at the park and demonstrating to the public, and Ed Silky joined from Washington State.

We were also joined by members of the Victorian Society of Alberta who helped man the station in the Miller's Cabin and added some period colour.

The "Wire Chief" and two members of the Victorian Society Christie Thacker and Warren Cummings.

We had great interest from the public with kids and young adults very curious about learning this "cool code". Interest in the Alberta MTC Line was high and many people called up the transcripts from the server website to watch as we tried to send coherent code (sometime successfully, sometimes hilariously NOT).

The Junior Telegraph club members were active at the Laggan and Sheperd stations in the park helping with the Kids Railway Challenge and also demoing their skills on standalone KOBs. They also got a chance to work with Bill and Cliff getting tips and encouragement from the pros.

Here are a few pictures of our setup at the Dispatcher's Office in the Miller's Cabin at the Park.

The Miller's Cabin

The displays setup had lots of information and hands on KOBs for people to try their hand at "Slinging Lightning"

A very successful event indeed.

Thanks to the members of the Calgary Chapter for helping to keep the sound of Morse alive.

73
Ciao
Kevin Jepson (KJ)
Instigator and Wire Chief
Alberta MTC Line Project

 Calgary (CG) Chapter Morse Telegraph Club