Trainline/Telegraph on the Reading

[jfrey40535]

Did the Reading ever modernize their trainline phone system considering it remained in use well into the 90s? The photos I posted are of pretty aincient equipment. As new as Warminster station is, I'm surprised that it had a trainline phone so old in there. I don't know if that phone at Walnut Hill was still active in the 80s, or if the one near NX was just rigged to work with the operator at Ayers.

To some degree, it looks like SEPTA has their own system in certain places with the most current gray metal boxes stamped "Telephone". There are a few at some outlying stations, but you'll also find them at Temple U and just outside the portal after the breakoff on the 9th Street branch. You'll see the same boxes on the subways, and there is one in Warminster as well, although it looked like it was inoperative. I don't know much about this system, or if its even still used.

I know there are phones on the NEC as well, such as Torresdale station which has a touch-tone phone inside, and the numbers to neighboring towers such as Grundy and Holmes.

[RDGTRANSMUSEUM]

As far as I know from working on Conrail,the wayside phones were still a throwback to 1955 or so. Remember having to use only a few of them,one on the turkey path (Hbg line)at a blind(sun struck) signal. We did not want the conversion on the air waves. I called the dispatcher and told him where we were, and that we needed permission to pass. That was a crank type phone. There are other ways of using a MODERN locomotive radio for communication which I will not go into here. People in the industry will know what I mean. Now,what I wonder about is the old "PBX line" (open dispatchers )system the Reading had. I think it was still in use in the late 90's at our TBS stations when the double stack upgrading was being done on the HBG and Reading lines. I hafta talk to one of my old buddies that was a block operator about it. i'll see him in Sept.

[amtrakhogger]

As far as I know from working on Conrail,the wayside phones were still a throwback to 1955 or so. Remember having to use only a few of them,one on the turkey path (Hbg line)at a blind(sun struck) signal. We did not want the conversion on the air waves. I called the dispatcher and told him where we were, and that we needed permission to pass. That was a crank type phone. There are other ways of using a MODERN locomotive radio for communication which I will not go into here. People in the industry will know what I mean. Now,what I wonder about is the old "PBX line" (open dispatchers )system the Reading had. I think it was still in use in the late 90's at our TBS stations when the double stack upgrading was being done on the HBG and Reading lines. I hafta talk to one of my old buddies that was a block operator about it. i'll see him in Sept.

Yeah, loose lips sink ships.

[amtrakhogger]

Did the Reading ever modernize their trainline phone system considering it remained in use well into the 90s? The photos I posted are of pretty aincient equipment. As new as Warminster station is, I'm surprised that it had a trainline phone so old in there. I don't know if that phone at Walnut Hill was still active in the 80s, or if the one near NX was just rigged to work with the operator at Ayers.

To some degree, it looks like SEPTA has their own system in certain places with the most current gray metal boxes stamped "Telephone". There are a few at some outlying stations, but you'll also find them at Temple U and just outside the portal after the breakoff on the 9th Street branch. You'll see the same boxes on the subways, and there is one in Warminster as well, although it looked like it was inoperative. I don't know much about this system, or if its even still used.

I know there are phones on the NEC as well, such as Torresdale station which has a touch-tone phone inside, and the numbers to neighboring towers such as Grundy and Holmes.

At one point, Septa had its own private telephone exchange concurrent with the old Reading Block line system. I remember Lansdale Station had a regular telephone for contacting Wind while places like Doylestown, Elm St., and Warminster had the hand crank block line.

[JimBoylan]

I was still using the phones at Street Rd., Johnsville, and the crew room in Warmister station to reach the dispatcher at the end of May, 1989. But, I could also use the Bell Telephone dial phone system to reach the operators at Wind and Wayne Junction. However, when we bought the metal phone box at Lofty, Pa. on the Catawissa branch from the trustees of the Reading Company in 1978, it had an International Telephone & Telegraph push button wall phone connected to the General Telephone & Electronics dial phone system. They didn't have Bell Telephone up in those mountains. There were some phone numbers penciled on the inside of the box, possibly for the dispatcher.

[limejuice]

One minor clarification... A trainline phone is what the PRR had onboard trains that allowed engine crews to communicate with crewmen aboard a train. This is why you'd see their locomotives with that signature antenna on the roof that looked like a misplaced handrail. The magneto phone system was referred to as a blockline.

[RDGTRANSMUSEUM]

Correct you are sir, not to be confused to a plain old "trainline" which is the common way of refering to the main air line piping on a car or locomotive.

[Arrestmespi]

trainwire, trainline, squawk line, can also refer to the intercom circuit reaching the dispatcher