The LNER Encyclopedia

Lately, an embryonic thoughts keeps occasionally recurring and briefly sprinting through my brain, which, for very practical reasons, may now only relate to those readers of/interested in, LNER / BR (ER) [ex-GNR (/NER?) ] routes.

There is a fair amount of lively interest in 'traditional' signalling (1-man signal box, levers, 'Block instruments', bell codes, etc.) ; - a number of 'preserved' railways have done (& are doing) sterling work in maintaining/restoring such equipment on their lines, and the national network still posses a few respectable-sized areas of working examples (but Network Rail's recent announcement on it's 'Vision for the Future' will help escalate their continuing disappearance).

But in comparison, it bothers me a little that those with first-hand experience of communicating using the single-needle telegraph [extant along parts of the GN main line (also anywhere in the NE area?) until as late as around 1970 (any offers of a later date?), must by now constitute a pretty small number, and the skill is much closer to becoming extinct than that of traditional signalling operation.

So, with no guarantees on this idea developing into anything (nor if it did, that I would be able to take a lead), - how many (not necessarily restricted to members of this forum of course) might there be, willing to declare an ability, or even just an interest that could become a working one, in this ancient form of electric communication, and possibly helping to prolong its life?

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I have had discussion today with someone who dabbles with thing's controlled from computers. I posed the question.. Could we set up a system where telegraph instruments could communicate via the internet? The first reply was of course, why? you could send a text, facebook message, or even pick up the phone.. Once i explained why i wanted to do it he agreed something could be done.

What do others think?

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Wow.
My own ideas were rather more modest.

I only got to know S/N morse telegraph working when all it was then used for was :
- MT messages (reporting train passing times to boxes further up/down the line),
- some boxes asking others where a specific train was,
- a box asking another about letting a train go (Cemetery asking Fins.Pk. No.6 if ECS for FP Carr. Sdgs. could continue on Up Fast line ; and
- on local circuits, describing (identifying) trains just signalled forward on the Block.

The older additional uses, - for telegrams to/from local stations, passing yard reports listing wagons by number, distributing relief signalmen's orders for 'next week', etc., - while fascinating that the system was used that way, I never felt sorry that I had missed out on participating in those.

Conversing between homes with morse, single-needle style, would be an intriguing task technically, yet it would be quite time-consuming to make use of. That prospect could be a bit of a turn-off (for me anyway), and I fear the novelty could wear off quickly.

I must admit that my clearest idea (perhaps modest, as I have said) when raising this subject was sparked by the demonstrations of signalling in the NRM Warehouse using the historic signalling school model railway, so I was thinking of perhaps of something like staging S/N telegr. demos somewhere at the NRM (though they have not yet had time to respond to me), including inviting audience members to participate.

Obviously though, telegraph sytems once had their day as a leading means of instant general communications (non-railway), so there could even be possible links with concerns/organisations interested in the history of science/technology / communications.
( About ten years ago I read a book entitled "The Victorian Internet", mostly about the history of the telegraph. I can easily recommend it as an interesting and fascinating read.)

[ I have also started a parallel thread on this, at http://www.signalbox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3361 . ]

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The skill is far from dead.

Try visiting a preserved signalbox and you will hear these instruments still in use, almost on a daily basis.

For example, although the Worth Valley has no Single Key Telegraph, it does have an omnibus telephone system, using a series of bell codes to contact the area you want. After that, some new-fangled voice system takes over...

It's not only preserved 12"/ft railways. The model railway at Gainsborough is controlled from a series of signal posts each running a section of the layout and communicating by bell signals.

Thanks for that jwelleans, I'd forgotten that! The floor at Gainsborough tastes particularly foul...

Blink Bonny wrote:The skill is far from dead.

Try visiting a preserved signalbox and you will hear these instruments still in use, almost on a daily basis.

For example, although the Worth Valley has no Single Key Telegraph, it does have an omnibus telephone system, using a series of bell codes to contact the area you want. After that, some new-fangled voice system takes over...

jwealleans wrote:It's not only preserved 12"/ft railways. The model railway at Gainsborough is controlled from a series of signal posts each running a section of the layout and communicating by bell signals.

Sorry, but I think you're running off the rails on this one gents - I cannot regard these posts as relevant to the OP.
Using long and short button presses (sometimes printed/written on circuit cards as if morse-style single or twin letters) to cause similarly variable length 'rings' of trembler bells or buzzers as codes on 'bus 'phone circuits in order to call a particular location onto the circuit for verbal conversation is not at all the same thing as conducting whole message exchanges using only morse code on a true telegraph instrument, which is the skill(method) for which I started this thread.

In any case, neither was I referring to train signalling using bells and/or Block instruments (sometimes referred to as 'Block telegraph...'), but actually to single-needle instruments used exclusively for free-form message-passing of mostly non-signalling information (and leaving aside the one-time MR practice of using brief multiple/coded taps of block signalling instrument needles to pass limited additional info.about a train that's in section or signalled).
In the great majority of preserved boxes, I doubt that 'these instruments...' (morse telegraph) are '...still in use' (not for their original purpose, anyway *), as, except (AFAIK) only the BR (ER)'s ex-GNR lines, and maybe more northern parts of/around the ECML, where S/N telegr.insts. lasted (working) to as late as around 1970, they tended to be superseded for morse message passing when telephone communication became well established, probably by about the 1920s-1930s in most cases, and I believe some companies' boxes never did have them, instead locating them in booking and possibly goods, offices.

* - [several companies' developed a type of block signalling instrument (which turned out to have remakable longevity) - e.g. some used by GNR, NBR, GCR, etc., which were derived directly from single-needle morse telegraph instrument designs.]

This may be a little bit off the OP but it does have some relationship and whilst all you telegraphists are together, may I raise the subject of the ABC machine which I have only experience of in two contexts.

Andrew Martin mentions one in his book " Death on a Branchline", which is set on the NER branch between Malton and Pilmoor Junction. The station was equipped with an ABC machine which allowed messages to be passed along the line by turning a large disc to point to letters of the alphabet.

One also featured in a few episodes of the BBC serial "Larkrise to Candleford". It was installed in the Post Office to send telegrams.

Does any preserved railway have an ABC machine?
How did it work exactly?

Colombo

Sorry Colombo, can't help with that one, though I think I do remember glimpsing it in 'Lark Rise...'.

There were several forms of telegraph used in the early days in several ways, including train signalling through a lot of the 19th century on various railway companies' lines, including such as 5-needle and 2-needle types ; also probably these and other types used in general communications around the country, pre-telephone period.
But the single-needle, lasting so long in the ex-GN area, was the only one I came to know much about, and for which there should be a few people still around with 'in service' hands-on experience.

My own experience of telegraph instruments was almost entirely based on train reporting - we were taught to learn the music that made up different numbers rather than to be able to read words letter by letter and as such I did, and still would, have difficulty "having a conversation" by telegraph. Nevertheless, in the days when I was using it, many of the older signalmen could indeed do that and indeed had to do so at some point in the career as on some lines (such as the High Barnet branch up to 1939) telegraph was the ONLY form of communication between boxes. I particularly admired many signalmens' ability to multi-task - I did not learn the art of working a frame, working block instruments and reading single-needle telegraph simultaneously but many were well capable of that.

Incidentally, I was initially taught by a signalman with a knife rattled between two levers, which was of far more value than what I learnt at signal school from an instructor who had never worked the telegraph in his life.

My inability to easily communicate anything other than train numbers and times is the reason I haven't leapt in to enthusiastically support Steve's idea but this doesn't mean I am against it. Having used the system regularly in its last few years I have no problem remembering what I learnt so it will remain "alive" with me until my brain goes.

Micky wrote:I pressume most of those old 'tele-instruments' ended up in private collections or a few made it into the vaults at YORK NRM?.

There are many different types of telegraph instrument at York including early multi-needle types that would not be compatible of course.

Blink Bonny wrote:Try visiting a preserved signalbox and you will hear these instruments still in use, almost on a daily basis.

Really? The only one I have seen with such instruments was at Chappel & Wakes Colne many years ago, but I don't think they were connected to anything. I don't visit preserved signal boxes on a regular basis but a recent visit to several boxes on the Great Central certainly revealed none.

Not that I have the knowledge nor the skills but I recently acquired two relevant LNER publications, which you Gentlemen probably have at home anyway:

Instructions relating to the Transmisson of Telegraph Messages 1931, 26pp (which contains the single needle and morse sounder alphabets and the message prefixes, affixes and general rules for message transmission and forwarding)
Regulations for Train Signalling on Double Lines of Railway by the Absolute Block System 1934, also 26pp

Facsimiles of these will in due course be made available through the LNER Study Group, and it's considered helpful to include with such publications any explanations or other information, recollections, etc. that record, explain and inform about such 'historical' methods.

Reference to p5 of the former confirms that the 'eyelashes' under StevieG's signature also read BZOH.

Full marks for being the first to correctly claim successful translation of my little 'code', 65447.
The long and short 'eyelashes' as you call them, of course represented the 'dashes' and 'dots' of the morse code, but angled one way and the other to indicate that which of the left and right deflection of the instruments' needles and operating handles represented each.

Yes I have the info in both books that you mention, but thanks for drawing attention to them - I might not have been aware of either or both.

(BZ and OH were the call codes for New Barnet South and Oakleigh Park SBs.)