A short walk down the coastal path from Llanon, Ceredigion, brought us to this rich stash of retired poles. They’ve clearly been part of a coastal defence scheme attempting to hold back the fierce Irish sea that smashes into this wild part of Cardigan Bay. The pole steps and inspection placards still visible on many of them. Ultimately the whole project was futile and the coastline has continued its eastwards march and is now some five metres beyond the “barrier” – now just an isolated run of skew-whiff sentinels, embarrassed at their own failure to be any help. Do see how the base of some of the poles has been gnawed away by the abrasive sand and pebbles. I spent a lot longer examining this wrecked wall than is decent even for an extremely curious nerd.
I can’t believe how long it’s taken me to get this post up on to the website. Jerry Deacon, who sent this to me, can’t believe how long it’s taken either. And Jerry, I’ve just realised is none other than (previously plugged on here) Kilgraney Sleepers (now railwaysleepers.com) – the place to go for old railway sleepers (the clue is in the name) but also old and new telegraph poles for ornamental and nerdic use. Nice plug for you there Jerry; I trust that this is adequate recompense for my tardiness.
Anyway, back in March. Jerry wrote to tell us that as an intrepid explorer he came across Hamelin Pool Telegraph Station (1884) near Shark Bay in Western Australia. There is a definite passion for telegraph poles in Oz. In October 1872 the Overland Telegraph line between Darwin and Adelaide was completed, and the Australian telegraph network became linked directly to Europe (termite attacks notwithstanding). Hamelin station was established as a repeater station that linked Western Australia into this same network. And this is the last of these stations still extant. Now, for some reason, it features, quite prominently, a nude linesman attending to the pole top apparatus. Why this should be is anyone’s guess and Jerry offers no explanation, nor does anything at the station itself. Though he did suggest Nude Pole of the Month as a possible new feature for these very pages. I’m going to pretend he never said that.
I’ve been playing with ChatGPT lately – the world-changing artificial intelligence that we, as a society, haven’t fully worked out what to do with yet. I won’t tell you how, but it is a real boon in one of my day jobs. I won’t be telling the people I work for either. Anyway, very recently, I was introduced to ChatGPT’s elder, more artistic sister. Her name is DALL-E. We’ve become very close. Close enough that Mrs TPAS is asking me what’s going on. I think up something and DALL-E draws it for me. Just like that. Here’s a couple of pictures she did for me of Godzilla in a wedding gown (Bridezilla). Mrs TPAS already knows about this side of me by the way.
So, obviously, being the supreme commander of The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society I wanted to know how DALL-E might draw a telegraph pole. So I asked her for “a photo realistic telegraph pole with 6 arms on a lonely road in Wales”. Below is what she came up with. It really flips my mind. I can almost feel the fuggy intelligence behind it all trying to please me. The landscapes and the poles are real enough, yet completely alien at the same time. Eerie even. I love them. What’s also clear is that DALL-E, like most people, doesn’t discern between a telephone pole and a power pole. Mwynhewch! as we say on lonely roads in Wales. (click an image to enlarge)
Not a lot of people know that I once stood as a Green Party candidate for a by-election in North Wales. I didn’t win. Nor did I come second. I don’t think third was what I was either. But I wasn’t last. And at the count the returning officer asked us all to say a few words to the gathered press and onlookers. This took me by surprise so I donned my soothsaying cloak of flabberghastion and defiantly declared that whilst they probably hadn’t voted for me today they would all be voting green one day. Talk about bold proclamation!
Anyway, it’s the soothsaying bit I’m trying to get to. I am in receipt of the photos you see below from two women correspondents. Both of whom move in high echelons. You know, meetings in boardrooms, with carafes of specially stilled water on oaken tables; white boards on the wall, minutes taken, the lot. If I had soothseen twenty years ago that one day they would be sending photos of telegraph poles to a strange man in Wales they would have laughed in my face.
And yet, here they are: Carter Wall, we have discussed before, is a mover and shaker in the supply of American energy. She is heavily into sustainable energy (me too in a saving-the-butt-ends-of-candles kind of way) and she lives at arguably the best address ever: Rattlesnake Gutter, Massachusetts. Carter was walking with her sister at Yarmouth Port on Cape Cod when they spotted the Heath Robinson splinted half-cocked pole replacement affair you see here. It was her sister, knowing of Carter’s history with this society, who suggested sending it to us. “Indeed, it’s an interesting conundrum for the pole-setter” she says, “a tight site with no room to set a new pole next to the old one as they usually do. Tough job.” Indeed.
Pippa, the sender of the other two pics is a former colleague of mine who must be surprised herself that not only does she remember me, but that she has developed herself an eye for poles. All the while supporting Tottenham Hotspur. You couldn’t make this stuff up. The dawn/dusk pole below is reminiscent of our very own February photo from the TPAS 2023 calendar. Now sold out, alas. Or should that be hooray? The second photo is taken through a train on St. Kitts. Alas, these last two came to me via social media and so suffered horribly from their compression algorithms. Without further ado, thank you Pippa and Carter:
Many splintered thing – a daughter pole in Cape Cod. Exact coordinates available upon request.St. Albans, taken yesterday in January 2020From a moving train in St. Kitts.
Nathan Unruh is not going to believe me when I write this: Nathan, member #1050 first wrote to me with a photo of a totem pole thingy back in October last year. And then just two days ago I thought to myself “do you know what, you’ve not posted that Nathan Unruh’s photo yet. He’s going to think you’re a miserable git who doesn’t answer emails.” Which is only partially true – I am often miserable, and I don’t always answer emails, but I am not 100% a git*1. Anyway lo and behold just one day after thinking about Nathan, a further email arrives not at all calling me a miserable git. In fact, this one contained another photo of a power pole in Washington (USA, top left) but with dramatically fewer words. So clearly Nathan was already suspicious that emails to telegraphpoleappreciationsociety.org were falling off the end of a wire somewhere and so was saving his fingertip effort and keyboard wear and tear. But they got through Nathan, they got through.
So photo #1 has an impressive power pole with happy buzzing transformer photo-bombed by a totem pole (tall, wooden etc. but no wires coming out the top) with all footballer’s heads on it. We could get into my feelings about Shrewsbury Town FC players’ heads being stuck on a pole/spike here but that’s for a different website. Anyway, this totem pole is called The Old Codger. And it’s in Colfax, Washington (USA, top left).
The second photo, received only the other day is of a versatile mid-country pole in Rosalia, Washington (USA, still top left). So there we have it. Emails to TPAS don’t necessarily disappear into the ether and you should never lose hope
My final point here is why Idaho correspondent when these two photos are from Washington (USA, top left)?Well, Nathan’s address is in Potlatch, Idaho. and surely, like all distances in the USA measured in light years from Washington? But now that I’ve had a look at Google Maps I can see it’s almost right next door. Blimey! I also did a bit of zooming around Nathan’s area on StreetView. And I’d just like to add, at this point, wow !
Member #1030 John Causer wrote to let us know of: (a) His complete suffusion with pride at having obtained entry into our most august of societies, and (b) A genuine telegraph pole related anecdote which we reproduce below. It came from from “Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman” the autobiography of Richard P Feynman (1918-1988), the American Nobel laureate theoretical physicist.
Oh, Feynman – quantum electrodynamics, superfluidity, path-integral-formulation – that Richard Feynman. Yes him.
Thank you John #1030, a small red star has been placed next to your name in the TPAS register of members, which I keep in a little box in the third drawer down in my desk. Keep up the good work.
PS. John also added: “The first sentence needs some parsing. Read as ‘I entered MIT and was accepted for the Pi Lambda Delta fraternity, which had various initiation tests’ “. What?
Readers with a functioning memory will, of course, remember this story we ran 9 years ago: answers-on-a-postcard-please. To save you clicking and looking, I asked what the hell is this little salt pot thing I saw hanging beneath a power pole in a remote valley in mid Wales.
Well thanks be to Chris Morris from Newtown who was also wondering what these are and so took a pair of binoculars to find out. Turns out, they are Fault Passage Indicators. According to Chris they are completely wireless and detect faults by analysing the phase currents and their imbalance, by analysing the electromagnetic field(s).
For the really curious out there they are made by a company called Bowdens whose registered address is Spook Hill (I write this on Halloween – you couldn’t make this up).
This from their online catalogue of hard-core nerdy gadgets. I couldn’t find an “add to basket” button otherwise I’d have bought one and turned into a mug.
This is a tale from over there. Mike (whose surname never made it the 3,327 miles across the Atlantic) wrote to us from Seaside Heights, New Joizy wherein he is a lineman for an electric utility company. He sent us the photos you see below accompanied by the following missive:
“There once was a Lineman named Russ and a Telephone repair man called Tom. They were always playing jokes on each other, such as , if Russ saw Tom’s truck in town, he would go put dielectric grease on his door handle or his steering wheel or tool bin door or all three.
So Tommy made a sign with the stencil kit they use to make tags for the poles and that’s where this came from. I’ve been working here 20 years and I know Russ retired way before I started, so I don’t know how long that’s been here.”
This website and society leans, say, 95% towards Britishness, so over here a more relevant, accessible, phrase stenciled into a telegraph pole might be “Russell is a Knob“.
If you are at all affected by things you’ve seen or read on this page you should call “Hope & Healing” on 866-202-HELP
Laurence Langley wrote to tell us of his new role – that of responding to Openreach’s hazardous equipment within 2 hours! And herewith one of his more interesting poles.
“This pole feeds the entire island and due to the river crossing & boats the pole is 15m to avoid collision. TW17 9LN – DP107 CP1 – 15m Medium. The only access to the island is by barge and will require a crane to transport the pole across, if the Water Authority do not require the current wire height then we would be looking at a 10m hollow pole, this would save us transporting and will be easier to install the pole.”
Apologies for the low-resolution of the images. WIGIWYG (What I get is what you get)
NB. The value of an outside loo from one of those properties would probably be five times what my house is worth. And I live in a castle. In Wales.
I’ve been rather lax in my updates of this good site lately. For which I apologise and for which I proffer excuses #3 & #12a. I realise that my tardiness in this respect has denied readers their regular ingestion of telegraphular intelligence but unless #12a *1 happens again, this neglect may or may not be repeated.
Now, Martin Cummins… There’s a man whose anorak is thicker than mine. Longer, stronger, more weatherproof, more anoracky, and with a rim of faux fur around the hood which serves no apparent purpose. Martin has dedicated almost his entire adult life to finding out what the little tubes are that stick up from the ground at the side of many telegraph poles.
My correspondence with Martin on this subject has been ongoing for many years and I feel it has reached zenith now as he introduces us to:
It’s funny how things seem so obvious once a UK patent application shows you how. But this doesn’t quite apply for me here. I’ve studied this document <read it in full here> and whilst, superficially it looks like it would be able to tell you how deep a pole was planted, I can just imagine that gauging pen snagging and snapping off at, if not the first, then the second, time you use it. This patent idea though does have the bonus in that it comes from God’s own country. I feel I ought to know the patentee.
A reminder of why we need “depthing tubes” in the first place came from John Scott to whom we are grateful. “These tubes have been fitted to the sides of poles since some silly pole installers decided due to digging and finding rock in their way, they would simply cut the butts off the poles and make it look like the poles were installed in the correct depth while some may have been installed less than a meter and thus endangering future engineers climbing the poles.”
Anyway, back to our original correspondent, Martin. I can’t help but wonder does he feel that life is complete – now that he’s found out what those little tubes are for what else is there? Such dogged determination needs a new purpose and I hope he finds it around the subject of telegraph poles.
Actually, here’s an idea. This conundrum Answers on a postcard please has been outstanding since 2012. Perhaps, Martin, you could dedicate the next part of your life to solving the “Saltpot Conjecture”. i.e. what the hell is one of these?
The world certainly needs tenacious folk like Martin Cummins. Anyway, he did also tell us about Basingstoke Museum, where they have an old GPO Maintenance Van, replete with everything to make you self-sufficient when lost in the Trossachs. It’s on my list of museums to visit before I die.
