The first Supertrain since the "Pandemic Hiatus" was held on April 15 and 16th and was a great success with over 11500 people attending across the two days!
The Calgary "CG" chapter of the Morse Telegraph club created a four station telegraph network that spanned almost 200'. The line connected our display to telegraph installations for three museums that had displays at the show. This network was the first ever live telegraphy display at Supertrain.
The four stations on the line were, from West to East:
HP Heritage Park from Calgary AB
WA Alberta Central Railway Museum from Wetaskiwin AB
CG Calgary Chapter MTC
BY Revelstoke Railway Museum from Revelstoke BC
Each station on the line consisted of a relay, key, and local sounder with battery. The line was a 16 Ga copper two conductor cable with the stations spliced into one conductor with the other being the ground return. Power for the line was supplied by a mains connected variable power supply connected to the display in our MTC booth
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| Your editor at the MTC Calgary Booth |
The total resistance of the circuit was close to 550 Ohms with an additional 500 Ohms added to bring the current down to 46 mA with a voltage from the power supply of 40 V. This worked very well and all the relays were snappy once adjusted on the actual line. However when Bill Wilson of the Alberta Central Museum added his bug the relays could not keep up and he couldn't send. Bumping the voltage up just past 50 V and adjusting the relays a bit allowed the bug to send at full speed and be received at all the stations.
We did some manual sending back and forth from the stations, but the show was very noisy and, at our current skill level, it was too difficult to follow. To keep things moving I had a laptop running MorseKOB, connected to the MTC display with one of Chip Morgan's interfaces, spooling out the first chapter of The Hobbit from our KOBserver. The laptop was connected to the Internet via tethering through my cellphone. This had the advantage of permitting us to demo sending at any of the stations because the KOBserver will back off when the key is opened. One issue was that with the overloaded cell network at the show sometimes the KOBserver would take a bit longer to realize the key was open. Running the KOBserver locally on the laptop alleviated that issue.
I walked around to several other groups with my KOB connected to our KOBserver via another cellphone tether and discussed our proposed Alberta MTC Museum link and had a lot of interest. Once our "proof of concept" is running we will be able to get many more museums and groups connected up in Alberta and Western Canada and potentially as far away as Southern Ontario!
The steady click/clacking of the telegraph sounders attracted a lot of interest from the attendees providing us an excellent opportunity to describe how landline telegraphy works, its history, and use in Railway Operations. The other museums said the same thing, that the sound of the active displays attracted people to their booths.
It also attracted many "old timers" who regaled us with tales of their days as station operators.
All in all a very successful 2023 Supertrain!
Looking forward to more opportunities to demonstrate our skills and show how Landline Telegraphy works at future events.
Calgary "CG" Chapter MTC Members.
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| L to R Larry Isenor, Ken Ashmead, Kevin Jepson |
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| L to R Marilyn Maguire, Joanne Johnson Maureen McVeigh, Heather Davis |
