[GreenKeys] What is to become of NADCOMM?

[Doug Alderdice]

 > I don't recall what we'd said on this topic on Greenkeys, but I would
 > be interested in hearing if anyone has seen telegraph or Teletype or
 > telephone displays integrated into any working railroad museums or
 > tourist railroads.

I don't recall either, but I do participate in just that sort of venture 
here in the WNY area.  The Western New York Railway Historical Society owns 
the former Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh (BR&P) RR station at Orchard 
Park, NY, which is south of Buffalo.  I have been invited on a few 
occasions to come out to their station and set up a working telegraph line 
for their open house event.  We string a line between the station office 
and the Society's "bobber" caboose parked on a nearby siding.  Visitors to 
the site can write out a "telegram" to themselves and we send it by 
telegraph to the other station, and they pick it up when they visit that 
end of the line.

No, it's not a permanent display, but it is one effort to try to 
acknowledge the role the telegraph (and by extension, the teletype) had 
with the railroads.  It's always worth the effort to drag out and set up 
all my telegraph gear (the Society doesn't have any of their own) and hear 
and see people old enough to have been in RR stations when RR travel was 
"the" mode when they hear the telegraph clatter away the look of enjoyment 
on their faces -- "Ooooh, yes!  We always used to hear the telegraph in the 
station!"

See a photo of me at the key at "RK" at 
http://www.pce.net/dalderdi/telegrph.htm

I once visited the Pennsylvania Rail Museum near Lancaster, PA, and saw in 
their reconstructed station inside the trainshed that they had full 
telegraph gear set up in the operator's window of that station, which looks 
wonderful.  I asked a docent about it and whether it was functional and was 
given a rather gruff reply, "We have a tape we can run."  Oh, OK.

73,

Doug, KA2WFT
Buffalo, NY