Pole Line Remnants

There was a time when major railroad lines had poles carrying code lines used in communications systems. Newer forms of technology did in pole lines and many railroads have removed the poles and wires.

The latter in particular were often targeted by thieves seeking to steal the copper wire to sell at a salvage yard.

When pole lines were common, some railroad photographers disliked them, seeing them as clutter. But I’ve come to view pole lines or what is left of them in a different way.

Where they exist they add a sense of railroad history to a scene.

The photographs above were made on May 29 on the Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern just west of Brimfield, Indiana.

I had heard the eastbound 20E calling signals over the radio and looked for a grade crossing at which to catch it. When I saw the remnants of a pole line here I knew this was the place.

It also was nice to have some adjacent farm fields in which the corn is coming up for another harvest season.

Rounding the Bend in Kent

It used to be that Crain Street in Kent crossed over the CSX New Castle Subdivision tracks on its own bridge. A sidewalk on the north side of the bridge offered an expansion view of westbound trains rounding a curve before heading south through downtown Kent.

A road construction project several years ago removed the Crain Street bridge and instead extended Fairchild Avenue over the CSX tracks.

That bridge came with fence. However, a pedestrian bridge located where the Crain Street bridge used to be still offers some photo angles.

The image above was made on March 23, 2008, from the old Crain Street bridge. A westbound is about to pass a remnant of pole line that once graced this former Baltimore & Ohio line.

Photograph by Craig Sanders

It’s the Little Details That Can Make a Picture

At first glance, these two photographs appear to have little in common.

The top photograph depicts former Lake Superior & Ishpeming 2-8-0 No. 33 at Sugarcreek on April 19, 2008, during one of its few outings under Ohio Central ownership.

In the bottom photograph is Oil Creek & Titusville Alco S2 No. 85 in Titusville, Pennsylvania, on April 20, 2006.

Both images feature good composition that invites you to linger over them for a moment or two.

But what these have in common are little things that maybe you noticed but might not have stopped to think about the role they play in creating a story.

In the photograph of No. 33 there is a figure standing next to the locomotive looking it over.

He appears to be a crew member and is wearing a broad brim hat. No. 33 is a smallish steam locomotive, but even if dwarfs a person standing next to it.

In the OC&T image, there is a portion of a pole line visible along the tracks. That combined with the large and old red brick industrial building in the background suggest another era.

The boarded up windows of the industrial building indicate that era is well past.

It used to be common to see pole lines along railroad right of ways, but in the past decade or so railroads have pretty much removed them as they rely on other technology to communicate.

Of course nothing says “another era” like a steam locomotive. And Alco has been out of the business of building diesel locomotives since 1969.

There is another link between these two images as well. Both locomotives were used in tourist train service and part of the rational for having tourist trains is to provide a glimpse of the past.

Railroading hasn’t gone away and figures to be around for a long time to come. But in many ways subtle and obvious it is always changing. Hence it’s nice to have reminders of the past, including those things we may have forgotten from it.

Photographs by Robert Farkas

Those Vanishing Pole Lines

I wonder how many people who are not railroad enthusiasts are aware that railroads in the past decade have been getting rid of their pole lines.

It used to be that pole lines and railroads were synonymous. Those wires carried telephone conversations and commands to line signals and switches.

But railroasd have gone to underground cables, satellites and radio technology and in the process have removed their pole lines.

You can still find pole lines along some tracks, but the wires are inactive or gone.

One byproduct of pole lines are insulators. Many people collect and display them in their homes.

Many are made of glass and make for colorful decorations or paper weights.

These insulators are part of a remnant of a New York Central pole line at the Conneaut Historical Railroad Museum.

A Place Time Forgot on the Toledo District

One in a periodic series of images that I made last summer.

I wound up at this rural grade crossing on the Toledo District of Norfolk Southern by happenstance.

We were checking out potential sites to photograph a train even through there were no trains that we knew of to photograph on this line.

The crossing is near Williston, Ohio. I immediately liked this location because it had that quality of a place that time forgot.

The block signals in the distance guard the east end of Williston siding and are the search light type signals once common on the Nickel Plate Road.

Off to the side of the tracks is a pole line. Yes, the wires don’t seem as connected as they once were, but along many mainlines the pole line has been removed altogether.

Searchlight signals and pole lines remind me of another time. I have memories of riding in the backseat of my Dad’s car going and the road running parallel with railroad tracks.

I remember seeing searchlight signals and pole lines. You can still find those in some places, but they are not as common as they used to be.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders