These much ignored pieces of rural and urban furniture finally have a website of their own.
This is not the site to visit for technical information pertaining to telegraph poles. You'll find nothing about 10KVa transformers, digital telephone networking or even so much as a single volt. This is a website celebrating the glorious everyday mundanitude of these simple silent sentinels the world over. We don't care what the wires contain either. They all carry electricity in some way be it the sparky stuff which boils your kettle, or the thinner stuff with your voice in it when you're on the phone.
Shortest Telegraph Pole in S. Africa
Rob Stayt, a retired policeman, telephone tech and polymath farmer from South Africa sent us this photo of a pole that is so short it is hard to imagine it ever being beaten in the T.P.A.S vertical challenge.
Rob tells us that a combine-harvester pulled down the farm telephone ine down along with three poles ( a drive-by uprooting as it were). Once he’d chased down the errant harvester and demanded apology for Mrs Stayt who was on the phone at the time Rob decided to repair the part of the line near the house. This is the result.
Now, Rob lists his address as Natal, South Africa… I remember my missus going to ante-Natal classes – I always wondered why she was so bloody long!
Kalmykia
You can’t run something like the Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society and not be thought of as something of a “nut-job”. Fair enough. One of my many psychoses involves a sort of “survivor guilt”. I’m troubled terribly that everyone else died in the trenches during WWI and I didn’t. I also didn’t get killed storming a beach on D-Day in 1944 and nor did I get massacred during close-quarter combat in either Korea or Vietnam. Mainly, perhaps, because I was born some years after most of these wars had burnt themselves out.
Nonetheless, it was whilst reading some “Stalingrad porn” that I became interested in the region called Kalmykia. On their way to ultimate destruction on the banks of the Volga, the German 6th army had to cross the vast grassland desert called the Kalmyk Steppe. Its endless undulating emptiness sapped the will of the columns of soldiers traversing it. Then when it rained it turned instantly into evo-stik (TM).
Anyway, some armchair geography courtesy of Google (TM) and its very fine search engine turned up this photo. This, for me, hits the very essence of what I love about telegraph poles. Kalmykia is now #44 on my places-to-see-before-I-die list.
Thanks to Peace-on-earth.org (aka much-travelled photographer Len Gao) for letting me use the pic. See more from Kalmykia here.
Poles from across the Pond
They know a thing or two about poles over there in the US. Our Massacchusettian correspondent, Carter Wall (0487H), has sent us a couple of photos. Carter, you may remember, works as an electrical contractor in Boston – which is something of a dream job for her – being an avid pole fan and all that. With a particular penchant for “daughter-poles” like the first picture here, wherein an old pole is strapped to a new one thus obviating the need to transfer all the gubbins*1 over. See her previous submission on this subject right here.
She says:
BTW, here we call them telephone poles even though many of them are owned by the electric company. Don’t ask me why. There are a lot of insulator collectors here but very few who, as your society does, venerate the poles themselves. Good Job!
Her second picture is of some new solar generation interconnection poles, wherein she adds: “Aren’t these beautiful? They just went into operation in February.”
It’s hard to disagree. And they put me in mind of that Bee Gees song – you know the one… “And the lights all went down in Massachusetts”
Carter also wins the award for the most interesting TPAS member’s address for 2013 – She lives at No. 16 Rattlesnake Gutter Road. You couldn’t make it up.
*1 Gubbins, [n] [informal] British plural of doohickey. More than one thingamabob.
Yet more on pole dates
Not for nothing is Keith S**** the Honorary Technical Advisor to this most august of societies. Because he knows secret things about Telegraph Poles on Her Majesty’s Service he has to remain as anonymous as an M16 spook. Luckily for us, though, he shadows our every post on this website and in times of need he pops up (a bit like or Billy the Cat) and offers us technical advice of a highly sagacious nature. Like this on pole dates…
Not to be picky, but the date on poles was scribed in (with a scribing gouge) at the time a pole was dressed i.e. put through a machine with twin revolving planing heads to remove the inner bark and provide a smooth surface (outer bark was removed in the forest). The pole was then open stacked for seasoning and probably not creosoted until the following year when it’s moisture content was suitable, hope this is of interest.
K.S.
Remember wherever you are in the world, if you are looking at a telegraph pole and wondering about something in it, on it or under it, listen out for that voice from the shadows, it might just be our H.T.A.T.P.A.S. with the answer.
Catastrophe on the A382
Good friend, honourary member of this society (#0466) and professional Telegraphpoleologist, Andrew Rowsell sent us this picture with the recommendation that we should “have a butchers at it”. The pole, he tells us, was originally hit by a vehicle with the 20pr cable being all that is keeping the remains in the air. Apart from the police advertising their tardy arrival to this Dartmoor based incident, we also can’t help but wonder what the hell is a Stannary town? Anyway, this photo puts me in mind of one I saw in the middle of Ireland a couple of years ago.
With apologies to Andrew for the slow inclusion of his picture on the website, and apologies too to everyone else who has written in the last six months or so. I will get around to them all sooner or later I promise. And I do have a list of excuses to hand, my main one being that my wife and I are living in a pile of rubble with only 3 exterior walls and half a roof. “Renovation project” the estate agent called it stiflilng sniggers as he handed us the keys.
The Oldest Pole
And so to continue our sequence on ye olde poles – we seem to keep uncovering ever more ancient ones. Very special thanks to Gene Kingsley who sent us this photo of a pole that is presently 105 years old and still standing at Spalding, Lincolnshire. Gene reckons this pole is not long for this world because it has a “D” label on it. But I know of poles, still standing, that have been labelled thus for years so it could be around for a while yet.
www.bbc.co.ukSurely though, it’s going to be hard to beat the pole which BT Openreach recently donated to the Orkney Museum in Kirkwall. This pole was still going strong despite having been in active service since 1894. The only reason it was taken down was because the markings used by BT to check the pole have been weathered away. However, the date of 1894 is still clearly visible. Making this 119 year old beauty the oldest telegraph pole in the UK.
Unless you know different of course.
Pole of the Month – June 2013
We haven’t done one of these for a while. And even less have we done something involving an electricity pole. Karen Frost sent us this pic. Karen works for (probably) the best used Telegraph Pole supplier in the world – Kilgraney Railway Sleepers (www.railwaysleeper.com). She recognises that I like my poles, and thought I would like this “arty” pic which she titled “Crossed Wires”. I do, Karen, I do. And if it were any bigger than 800 pixels I would have it made into a poster. Kilgraney are based in Cotgrave, Nottingham, so presumably this perfectly pleasing parallel perspective pole is around there somewhere.
Cypriot and more olden Poles
Since we’re on about old poles, John Paine (#0512) has just returned from holiday in northern Cyprus. Therein he was amazed to find an abundance of very old ones – left overs from colonial days, he reckons. Anyway, herewith a delightful specimen he sent us with almost full complement of insulators. And they even appear to be tied off properly, though the wires do appear to just hang looose. Anyway, John also managed to bring back an insulator – pictured next to smaller GPO type. It carries the marking L62L if that means anything to anybody. Anyway, I’m sure there’s a law against this sort of thing. I think it’s called smuggling.
A marvellous time was had by all in the Mediterranean sun, but all of his telegraph pole hunting whilst he should have been on the beach or in a taverna has managed to convince John’s wife of his madness. But we don’t let that sort of thing worry us.
I refer you now to my previous post on old poles – you see, I to forgot include Disco Dave’s 1937 pole in its full glory and within its insalubrious surroundings.
Penultimately, I am in receipt of a clarification letter from Lord of the Northern Poles, Kev Currie (#0530). He insists that none of his photos were taking in the North Sea. In fact, his Northern Lordship’s domain is a dog-walking range 10 mile radius of Denholm in the Scottish borders – nowhere in Scotland could be further from the sea. The reason the pictures showed up on Flickr as being of oceanic origin is something to do with a missing GPS tag on his phone. So there you have it.
Absolutely finally, I just remembered an email I received quite some time ago from a chap called Paul Weliketomoveit. Paul was busy harrassing a BT engineer up a pole outside his house, as you do – and said engineer told him of a pole just off the A55 near St. Asaph which is stamped 1908 and is still good to take a ladder. Alas no photographic evidence so far. Paul said the engineer also showed him the new-fangled way they test telegraph poles. What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned hammer I ask? Anyway, Paul’s own pole, which carries his oft-disconnected broadband, has a 1941 stamp.
Ye Olde Telegraphe Pole
For something arguably as humdrum as a telegraph pole and the society celebrating the appreciation thereof, we don’t half receive a lot of correspondence about them. Much of it pertains to general knowledge, Trivial Pursuit (TM) type questions such as “How many are there?” And “Which one is the oldest?”. The answer to question 1 can be found here and here. We’ve started to look into question 2.
Well clearly 60 years in the ground and open to all weathers doesn’t seem to do them any harm. This fresh looking thing was sent in by Disco Dave (#0526). This, he tells us, is a shallow climbable pole from one of his recent surveys. It’s a 24ft light pole from 1953. The label between the C and the 1 is an a559 label and it tells us that on this particular pole we are allowed to attach no more than 7 dropwires in any 180 degree arc so as not to overload it.
From the same correspondent…
Just started on this years batch of pole replacements and found this beauty from 1937 that needs changed out. 76 glorious years are about to come to an end for this poor fella 🙁
And then there’s telegraph pole aficionado and Lord of the Northern Poles, Kev Currie (#0530) who found this beauty, planted in 1936. I make no apologies for plugging, again, Kev’s flickr photostream. His is most definitely a connoisseur’s collection of pole pics. Kev doesn’t say where this pole is and his other locations are quite ambiguous too. Some photos he has marked as being somewhere around the Dogger Bank in the North Sea.
Anyway, is 77 years the oldest photographed pole? Watch this space.
Reg Tracepurcel
If ever anyone looked like a murderer it’s Reg Tracepurcel. Shifty shop steward type. Yes, we know his sort. My Missus reckoned it was the old guy, played by Martin Jarvis. But I had Tracepurcel’s card marked all along.
