Greetings
Way back in January 2024 I sent a brief introduction on the Alberta MTC Line Project our to the Alberta Museums Association List Server and I figure it is time for an update and a little more detail!
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My name is Kevin Jepson and I am a board member for the Calgary Chapter of the international Morse Telegraph Club. I am also the "Wire Chief", I.E. the technical lead, and instigator of the Alberta MTC Line Project.
The ABMTC Line Project is an ambitious plan to connect museums, and other groups in Western Canada, that are interested in preserving and demonstrating land line Morse Telegraphy, to a functional telegraph line running across the Internet. Land line Morse was used by railways and commercial telegraph systems in Canada from the advent of the CPR in the 1870s right up to the last telegraph message sent on the CPR telegraph system a hundred years later in 1973. The telegraph was THE long distance communication system. The project is connecting old telegraph equipment, that many museums have in their collections, to our working telegraph line. Many small museums across Western Canada are actually housed in old train stations where that equipment was actually used. There is a surprisingly large amount of this equipment gathering dust in our collections or in static displays. We aim to bring it back to life to make our displays actually work, to add the sounds of Morse code to these displays and keep the sound of Morse alive. We don't just want canned sounds we want the line to carry real telegraph traffic from real people!
Since 2024 and to-date we have connected 9 museums and groups, 6 in Alberta and 3 in BC, to the line and there are more than 30 groups and museums who have expressed an interest in getting connected. We have interested museums and groups across Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. We have also received expressions of interest from as far North as the Yukon, as far West as Southern Vancouver Island, and as far East as Quebec.
As part of the project it was necessary to develop an inexpensive, standard, turnkey interface setup that would make connecting physical telegraph equipment to the Internet easy, safe, and secure. Our system enables Morse code to be sent across a virtual telegraph line to other stations just like it would have been sent across those thousands of miles of physical wire! Our setup has been very successful and as long as a site has some kind on internet access available we can usually get it hooked up.
The website for the project has a map showing the current active stations on the line updated in real time. Feel free to check it out here: https://abkob.servehttp.com
The software used to make the connection has the ability to translate the Morse code traffic into English letters and there is a real time transcript of the traffic available here: https://abkob.servehttp.com/traffic.html
It does a fairly good job with the old pros but for us just learning to send it can be... "interesting".
In order for the project to be successful we also need people to use it.
To that end we focus on education and training on the use of American or land line Morse Code (which is different than International Morse code used on radios), and the history of the telegraph in Canada and elsewhere in the world. Of course the telegraph was intimately linked with the railroad, but it was also used for government, banking, newspapers, and other commercial traffic. We have resources available for learning to send and receive American Morse Code, and technical information on keeping this old equipment working properly. Many of these resources are available through our low volume mailing list at: https://groups.io/g/Alberta-MTC and the website for the Calgary chapter of the Morse Telegraph Club here: https://alberta-mtc.blogspot.com/
At Supertrain in Calgary last year I was interviewed by a Ham Radio video blogger, Vince d'Eon, about the project.
You can see that video here: https://youtu.be/-jM10EvASBE
I send out a semi-regular update on the status of the project and am happy to add anyone interested to that mailing list.
If this sounds interesting and you would like more information, or would like to participate in the ABMTC Line Project, please reach out to me, Kevin Jepson, at albertamtcline at gmail.com
73 (Telegrapher's code for 'Best Wishes')
Ciao
Kevin Jepson (KJ)
Instigator and Wire Chief
Alberta MTC Line Project
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| Calgary (CG) Chapter Morse Telegraph Club |
