Telegraph poles strung with telephone wires along a railway in the 1940s and 1950s before
the lines went underground.
Detail from an old painting.
When I was a child, the wires connecting telephones to the exchange were
not buried underground. It was quite normal to see roads and railways lined
with them, which may have been why they were known as telephone 'lines'. They were carried up high, strung between poles known as telegraph poles.
Engineer climbing a telegraph pole with special grips on his legs. Detail
from a picture in Milton Keynes Telephone Museum.
It was almost hypnotic to look out of the windows of
trains and fix one's eyes on the
telephone wires. The train windows
were very much narrower than those of later trains, so it was rather like viewing
through a slit - albeit a wide one. So the telephone wires seemed to go up and down as the train moved from the high points of the poles
to the sagging points mid-way between.
Telegraph wires runing along the side of a road. Screenshot from an old film.
This website Join me in the 1900s is also known as
Join me in the 1900's and is ©
Pat Cryer.
The 1940s and 1950s are also written as the 1940's and 1950's.
