My maternal grandfather was a career Frisco employee, most of the time as a lineman on the QA&P. Mom grew up in Quanah. As a tribute to granddad, I decided to make an attempt at semi-realistic looking telegraph poles and lines. It's not easy...especially not the line part. gjbndude gave me some great info on these things (white band around a pole every quarter mile, occasional call box, etc). Don't know when the call boxes came into being. At one time a lineman had to climb a pole and hook onto a line to communicate with the dispatcher. Parenthetically, I read the thread on hand making telegraph poles. A friend gave me a bag (probably 40 or so) of HO scale telegraph poles, so I just used those. Anyway, after painting the poles (twice), painting insulators (some twice), trying to figure out how to string thread to look somewhat realistic...here is the first line on the first few poles. It is super time consuming. There was no way to create the symmetrical sag in the line between each pair of poles. Since it's thread, which is wrapped tightly around a spool until used, it just waves around all over the place. As a result, I got it as tight as possible and left it.
Looks good Paul. The white lines around the poles were on band at 1/4 pole, 2 at the 1/2 mile pole, 3 at the 3/4 mile pole and then the mile pole number. It worked pretty good. Did you use a water soluble glue on the "insulators"? Reason I ask is; doesn't fabric relax and even stretch when it gets wet? I wonder if there is a solution that could be mixed up and applied to the threads to relax it and stay that way. I dont know might not work at all. Just wondering.
Good question, Tom. Let me ask my wife the quilter and find out. One more shot with an ABA set of F3's leading a mixed freight. Tom Holley did the lead unit.
