Jim,
You are correct!
A Western Union Telegraph Company Telex machine interfaced with the Telex exchange in one of two ways. The first option was a "local loop" which was a 5 ms loop when the Telex machine was idle and then a 60 ma loop when the Telex machine was in operation. The second option, sometimes called long distance or polar was used when a 60 milliampere connection could not be achieved, provided a ground return polar circuit using 35 milliamperes on separate send and receive wires.
73
Russ WA3FRP