Calais Branch Code Rings

Sorting through stuff in old boxes in the garage and came across a copy of the phone rings on the crank phones for the Calais Branch - penciled in is "Rev 3-24-70". There are probably only about 3 people in the world who care but on the chance one of them is on here I'll post it. Not sure if any of these correspond with the telegraph calls in Morse days.

Short ring - 3 seconds Long ring - 5 seconds

Portland PBX ____________ (10 seconds)
Portland Disp ____________ _ (10 seconds)
Bangor:
Car repair house _ _ _ _ _
Engine House ____
Engr Dept _ _
Gen Agent _ ____
Asst Supt ____ _
Yard Office ____ ____
Holden _ _ _ _ ____
Bucksport _ ____ _
Green Lake _ _ _ ____ _
Nicolin _ ____ _ ____
Ellsworth ____ _ ____
Wash Jct ____ _ _ _
Franklin _ _ _ _
Tunk Lake _ _ _ ____
Unionville _ _ ____ _
Cherryfield _ _ ____
Col Falls ____ ____ _
Whitneyville _ ____ ____ _
Machias ____ _ _
E. Machias ____ _ _ ____
Ellis ____ _ ____ _
Dennysville _ ____ ____
Ayers Jct _ ____ _ _ _
Pembroke ____ _ _ _ _
Baring _ _ ____ _ _
Calais _ _ _

There - I've passed it along and can toss out the copy in good conscience!

Thanks a lot for posting this. I was just looking through an old timetable and it listed locations for company telephones. These are the things that get lost to history. We will preserve this as part of the history of the Calais Branch.
Leverett Fernald
Downeast Scenic Railroad

Personally I find things like that fascinating. It's the little, seemingly insignificant details of history that are always the first ones to get lost and forgotten forever... only for many of us to realize decades later that it would've been nice if someone had saved that information.

Thanks for posting it!

Mr. Fernald, are there any railroad phones remaining on DSRX's section of the branch, or are they all long gone? For that matter, are they any phones remaining on the rest of the branch? There were a few on the B&M's mainline in Maine as recently as the late '90s -- not operational, of course -- but I think they've all since disappeared.

Curious how the code system worked... Is this a code a caller initiated so the "callee" could ID the call was for him, like was done with telegraph? Was the code manually executed like telegraph?

Cowford, 407,
Sorry to say, but nothing remains of these telephones on our end of the branch. As to the remainder of the branch, I couldn't say. Although I don't know for sure, I suspect the way the phone system worked was similar to an old party line. You would pick up the receiver to be sure no one was using the line, then hang up and turn the hand crank to make the number of rings to call the party, then wait for the party to answer. When I was a young fellow, we lived on a road that still used a party line. We had dial phones, but the principle remained the same.
Leverett Fernald
Downeast Scenic Rail

I agree on the working of the phone line. You would crank out the sequence for the party you wanted to reach, and upon hearing their ring they would pick up (as would anybody else who wanted to hear what was going on )

I'm glad there was some interest in this. 407 is right, it's the small details like this that wind up lost as the years go by.

BR&P wrote:There - I've passed it along and can toss out the copy in good conscience!

I understand the wink that you wouldn't throw this away, but I would like to suggest that you donate it or allow Down East Scenic to retain this. It is all too possible that somewhere in the future someone could actually toss it out...

What I have is a copy of the original document. I can't recall whether I made the copy, and still have the original in a box somewhere, or if this is all I ever had. I'll be glad to send it to an appropriate organization at no charge - just want to be up front that this is not the original MEC document.

Not to stray off topic, but there is a telephone museum in Ellsworth (probably not very far from DSRX?). Just thought I'd toss that out there for anyone who is interested in telephony history.

For more information on the telephone museum in Ellsworth, see http://ellsworthme.org/ringring/. They have a lot of interesting telephones and some working switching systems.

To see and hear coded rings in use, come to the WW&F Railway Museum in Alna, Maine (http://www.wwfry.org). Our codes are:

_ Anyone at Sheepscot station
_ . Dispatcher
_ .. Machine shop
_ ... Gift shop
_ _ Alna Center station
. _ Track crew

They will be having a work weekend on April 24-26, during which I'm sure there will be a lot of magneto phone traffic.