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.
Detective Constable Endeavour Morse
As if the new ITV series “Endeavour” isn’t already enough for murder mystery and Inspector Morse buffs – this week there was an added dimension in that episode #3 featured a telegraph pole. Not only was this pole key to solving the dastardly crime, but it’s constituent ceramic insulators were provided by this very society. Also the expertise [sic] that helped their props dept reconstruct a GPO pole of the era. Relying on me for expert advice will probably lead to a flurry of emails about anachronistic technology from real ex-GPO types. Serve them right for asking me.
‘Twas some months ago we posted them a collection of mostly intact double-groove insulators. And a couple of months later when we received back a parcel of completely different and largely broken ones. They had, it seem, edged their bets and borrowed some off Jack Nesbit too (British Insulators website), returning me his lot by mistake. Only they got knacked in the post. Oh what a tangled web we weave.
Anyway, me and Mrs TPAS borrowed a telly for the event, sat down with a box of past-their-sell-by Maltesers and got ourselves enthralled in the murky world of murder on the telly. If you want to spoil things and see just whodunnit, click right HERE. I said it was going to be him all along – shifty looking so and so.
You can watch it on the ITV iPlayer thingy here. It’s available for the next 23 days.
Not long for this world
Lord of the Northern Poles, Kev Currie (#0530), was on his way home from Ikea in Edinburgh a few yesterdays ago, driving down to the Scottish Borders whereupon he found a line of 46 poles marked for removal. This is one of them. “Marked for removal”? That sounds like a euphemism to me…
Where’s grandad gone?”
“He’s gone upstairs, son, now shut up and put some more of his stuff in the skip.”
Kev’s online photo archive makes for very interesting browsing for we telegraph pole afficionados. Herewith my formal request to be able to post more up on here. Particularly the “test” pole. Can I Kev? Please?
Website Upgrade
Mrs TPAS has never seen me sweat quite like I did tonight – when I flicked the switch to delete the old website, install the new version, and the damn thing refused to work. A quick pot of rhubarb yoghurt and a glass of Big Nev’s from the fridge and I soon got it together again though. This is version 3 of whatever it is and promises to be a bit more hacker-proof than the old, almost identical website. Those pesky jihadist hackers !
Not everything is working quite right just yet. But a bit more of that fruity hop flavour and refreshing dry finish and we’ll soon be ship-shape once more.
Falling Down Poles
Firstly, please let me apologise for the paucity of posts to this site of late. If you could see the pile of rubble which presently forms my abode you would understand. Completely. The same delay also applies to email replies, letters, photo posts and my income tax payment.
Anyway, by way of catching up a little, herewith a triptych of busted poles sent to us by telegraph pole task force of Graham Davis (#0513) and his sidekick, Dave (#0516) aboard their BT Battle Bus.
All this brings me on to this week’s reader request spot. We’ve had an email from a lawyer from a large international practice. With the following;
Dear Sirs
I represent a young man who was struck on the head recently by a falling BT telegraph pole, sustaining a severe head injury.
Are you able to recommend any experts who could comment on the decay to the pole, what caused it, how long it had been there, and whether BT’s system of inspection was reaonable. Any assistance would be appreciated.
Kind regards
Perry
Perry cleverly got straight to the point – aware perhaps that at the first sniff of anything legal I hit the delete key so hard I would normally require a replacement keyboard. Anyway, I am aware that many readers of this website fit the requested criteria, and if you can help in this matter, please do get in touch so that I can pass your details on. It might, however, be completely incongruous with your long service medal if you already work for BT though. Or even having a job this time next week.
Ray Clifton
THE UK’S MOST SENIOR TELEGRAPH POLE APPRECIATOR?
As a young lad in the late 1920’s Ray’s interest in telegraph poles started very early, and he quickly realised that a career in the GPO would get him legitimately close to his new found passion, without the awkward questions.
So, only two days after his 18th birthday on February 19th 1940 Ray joined the GPO, working at the Doncaster Office, and after two years as a Youth Trainee he undertook fitting work in preparation for becoming a lineman. Unfortunately the British Army had other ideas and in 1943 he was posted to India and Burma to become a sergeant in the Royal Signals, providing communications for the 14th Army, hurtling around on his motorbike. At the end of the war he turned his attention to sorting out Indian Posts & Telegraphs in Calcutta, a very responsible job but with limited pole action.
With much anticipation Ray returned to the UK in 1946 to become a lineman in Retford and these were just the best of times. For 3 years he was up a pole every working day absolutely in his element, until in 1949 promotion brought him down and inside as he moved back to Doncaster working in the Repeater Station, specialising in long distance communications.
But his heart was up the pole… and he had a cunning plan. During his time as a lineman Ray had amassed quite a few ‘bits and pieces’ and was able to build his own pole in his shed, where many a happy hour was spent fulfilling his passion.
His final career move was into management in Danesgate House, Lincoln for a desk job, but of course he was still able to be ‘Weekend Linesman’. He finally retired on 25th March 1984 after over 44 years stalwart service, sadly also hanging up his safety belt for good…
Congratulations to Ray, who as our most senior member celebrates being 90 years young this Easter!!
Steve Clifton
Hack Attack
You may have been wondering*1 what ever has happened to some of our other websites – those found under our “Further Whimsy” link below left. And why have they disappeared?
The sad truth is that they all got hacked, and defaced recently by some middle-eastern Jihad organisation. Why they felt that World of Pallets, B5105.com or the Welsh Space Agency website such a severe threat requiring annihilation is anyone’s guess.
The truth is that year’s of whimsical work has been undone and will take many painstaking hours to replace. Alas they were constructed using an unsafe version of web technology that will require serious updating to keep the hackers out in future.
Rest assured though that the sites will come back online as soon as possible. Just in time for nobody to read them anyway.
*1 You might not have been.
Blue sky, wherefore art thou
Gazing out of my window at my severe, shivering, sleety surroundings here at T.P.A.S.’s Svalbard H.Q. I got to trying to remember what a blue sky looks like. Or the colour green. Then up pops*1 an email from friend of this very society, Adrian Trainsett Esq. – whose certificate bears the number 0484, adorning the wall of his drawing room as it does.
Contained within this popped-up email was this first photo, taken by his good-self, of an azure sky background to a new-ish telegraph pole on the railway line near Oakworth on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway. A gorgeous, busy pole with a full complement of 8 dropwires. It could however have proven more gorgeous, scrumptious even, had it’s erectors deemed fit to equip it with some ceramic insulators. Yes, I know they don’t tie them off on insulators any more, but they wouldn’t half look the part and can be had for a handful of beans off eBay.
Mr Trainsett also clearly frequents various photograph repository websites such as Flickr and sent us a link to this next beauty. Another insulator-less blue sky pole. This disused pole on a disused railway bridge across the river Ythan. My research of Chinese water courses turned up a blank though. That’s because the Ythan is in Aberdeenshire not Zhejiang province. This photo is from the collection of one chairman_pete who describes himself as a flute-playing, photograph-taking engineer from Aberdeen. His is an eclectic photostream and this photo is now in my unofficial all-time top 5 telegraph poles.
*1 Yes, Adrian’s email really did pop up out of my computer like a piece of toast and even required the burnt bits to be scraped off before I could read it.
Cast Iron Australians
We’ve had a letter this week for Norma Warren from Esperance in Western Australia.
We have 14 iron poles made by Buller Ltd U.K. which we are using in our local reserve, as they are part of the history of this town.
They are the original poles used to link Adelaide to the west. The line came through Ceduna, Eucla, Esperance and onto Albany in Western Australia.Do you have any information on when and where these were made and sent to Australia?We would love to find out more about them but I am not sure where or how to get started. Please can you help?
regards,
Norma Warren,
Esperance Western Australia
Church of Telegraphpoleology
We readers of these pages are already of one mind that Telegraph Poles are things of beauty and provide an aesthetic punctuation to our roads, railways and verges. Some, and I include myself in this list, take the next logical step in bringing these functional ferriferous forms closer to home.
Member and friend of this society G.D. (#0513) recently sent us these photos of his own project. An eclectic collection of ceramic if ever there was atop a “D”efective shortened pole with the clever idea of using iron steps as feet for his display rather than planting it as I did mine.
G.D. also told us of his tip of using a strap-type oil filter remover for removing stubborn ceramic pots from their metalwork mounts. As a delinquent teenager I had no such trouble and used to just shoot them off with my dad’s air-rifle. That was, of course, before I was struck by lightning, saw the light, and founded this church of Latter Day Telegraphpoleology. Amen.
Z Poles
As well as not knowing or having ever heard of Campbell Brodie*1, Telegraphpoleologist, Disco Dave (#526) regularly travels the countryside looking at telegraph poles for a living. He told me that as well as “C” & “D” poles there could also be found poles that were marked “H” or “Z”.
Oh, how I scoffed as I quaffed my creme-de-menthe down at the club that evening. Little did I know that I would be the one with advocaat on my face. For here it is, proof positive of the rarely sighted “Z” pole.
He tells me…
…these poles basically mean there is a hazard next to the pole i.e. the spiked fence, but the engineer can position his ladders in such a way as to reduce the hazard rendering it safe to climb.
Well I never.And there we are, the spikes are there too. Thank you for that Disco. But “H” poles, really ?
By the way, an answer soon to come on the long awaited question of “Depthing Tubes”. Also courtesy of Disco Dave.
*1 Even though he only lives 126 miles away