[GreenKeys] What is to become of NADCOMM?

[Paul Wills]

The few railroad museums I've dealt with in the US seem to have little
interest in the "nuts and bolts" aspects of railroad signaling and
communications.  Usually they will display a few things that have "eye
appeal" but not much else.

The Illinois Railroad Museum, from what I hear is one exception.  They
actually have a communications and signal department that restores and
operates such things.  That would be one place that may be happy to work
with a teletype display.

PDW


----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Alderdice" <ka2wft@arrl.net>
To: <greenkeys@mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2002 10:02 PM
Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] What is to become of NADCOMM?


> > 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
>
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