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.
The Beast of the Scottish Borders
Lord of the Northern Poles, Kevin Currie* (#0530) sent us this photo he took recently…
Not sure if this was a woodpecker or a dinosaur! but either way some thing took a big bite out of this poor defenceless telegraph pole in the Scottish Borders!
Here be beasts. Big beasts! Big bad biting beasts! Go careful out there.
* Happy Birthday Kev
Erratum in FAQ
Typical! No experts in the field of overhead line and telegraph pole maintenance on here for months then two come along at once.
First, we are pleased to welcome Disco Dave as member #0526 to our exclusive society. As well as playing all the hits from the 70s & 80s, Disco Dave is also an overhead planner and auditor for a national telecoms provider. (No names, no pack-drill!)
Disco Dave has kindly offered himself forward as a source of technical info for all matters telegraphic. And as if to prove it, he has pointed out some errors in our FAQ pages…
The red letter doesnt mean decayed. it stands for defective (although it usually is for decay). poles can also be D’ed for being too shallow or close to spiked railings for example.
He continued pulling us to pieces…
…also the year on the 3m mark is the year the pole was preserved not the year it was planted. A pole may have been lying at the bottom of a pole stack in a contractors yard for a good few years before it ever gets planted.”
Now, here’s where it gets spooky. Just 2 days after Disco’s letter of correction, this very similarly worded document arrived from Campbell Brodie Esq. Similar, but with some added gap-filler…
“The date on a BT pole does not signify the year it was planted; it signifies the year the pole was preserved. i.e. creosoted. (Some poles can lie on a pole stack for 2 or 3 years).
“D” on a pole means “Defective”, not decay. It could be condemned for being unstable (too may wires in one direction without a stay counter-balancing it), or it could be that it is “Shallow depth” (not planted deep enough) or it may have been condemned for Damage. i.e by a hedgecutter or vandalism.
BT do not use the “S” label anymore or the “SD” label. “S” was for “Suspect” of decay, but it either is or it isn’t now. “SD” was for Shallow depth, however, depending on how many wires there are in any 180° arc, a pole may be classed as S.C. or shallow climbable even though it may only be 0.9m in the ground. Any poles that are “shallow depth” now are classed as “D” or defective.
Campbell, not presently a member of this society*, tells us that he is an Overhead Survey Officer for the same national telecoms provider and has been since joining from the G.P.O back in 1977. That’s right, the 1970’s – an era from which Disco Dave also plays records. You see, it all fits! The similarity in writing style, suspiciously concurrent content, 1970’s contemporaneosity and the unhealthy interest in telegraph poles. I put it to you that Disco Dave and Campbell Brodie are one and the same person. I rest my case.
* Can’t think why not!
D class citizen
When a telegraph pole is in a flush of youth, I don’t imagine a woodpecker would give it a second glance. Tarry, smelly and quite untree-like. But once they’ve aged a bit and the decades of torrential British summer has washed away the creosote, they start to become fair game. So what if the branches are a bit thin, and there’s no leaves to speak of? It’s tall, perpendicular, and is made of wood – ergo it must be a tree.
John Brunsden (#0469) sent us these photos recently :
Thought your readers might like to see what one of the telegraph poles biggest enemies (aka Woody Woodpecker) can do to condemn a pole to “D” status…
…you can see the coach bolts that hold the steps on are clearly visible
(sorry about the quality of pics – taken on a basic nokia works phone !)
Knowing what havoc finding hidden metalwork causes to my chainsaw; hitting that iron coach-bolt must surely have tested Woody’s resolve. The pole is near Langport in Somerset, and John tells me that the woodpecker usually comes back and makes holes in the new poles too.
Anyway, please don’t apologise for the quality of pics – they’re always gratefully received here at TPAS Towers. Please email photographic contributions to martin@telegraphpoleappreciationsociety.org.
Mon pole et mon droit
As the very first flake of snow reaches the ground, a great sense of unity ripples across the country: Firstly, the transport infractructure goes into free-fall, cancelling flights left right and centre. Trains and buses too go into a frenzy of delaying and cancelling services. Even London Underground get in on the act.
Then the schools all close, as do many council and local government offices. Simultaneously, too, a million public sector workers declare that they will “work from home” for the duration and settle down to a day in their “Onezies” watching endless quiz shows and programmes about doing up houses on daytime TV.
Just as well then that our Great British BT Openreach crews aren’t that lily-livered. No amount of treacherous conditions will stop them carrying out their steadfast duty erecting telegraph poles and repairing telephone lines.
Whilst we’re downloading endless drivel off the internet, or watching omnibus repeats of Eastenders on the iPlayer – these doughty pole engineers are out there braving the elements and battling frostbite so that we can continue surfing for things we probably shouldn’t when the wife is out – whatever the weather.
God bless BT Openreach pole planting teams – especially the Oxford crew seen here – comprising John Paine and Graham Davis – members, both, of this very society.
We salute you .
Power to the West Riding
Regular communicant, Adrian Trainsett Esq. has been in touch with this society once more. He has kindly submitted for our delectation a brace of photos of some new power transmission poles that have been fitted atop a hill near Keighley in the West Riding of Yorkieshire. He tells us :
Apparently, these are for carrying the thicker form of telegraphy, that used for illuminating the inside of dwellings et cetera. Although why people just cannot use gas for their lighting needs is beyond my reasoning.
I trust they are of your approval.
May I also convey the greetings of the season to yourself and to all the hundreds of your staff at the TPAS.
Firstly, the pictures do meet our approval. However, picture 2 was so similar to picture 1 that I had no choice but to omit it from these pages and instead use it to line the bottom of our hamster’s cage*1
Secondly I am in agreement that Acetylene was a perfectly acceptable power source for lighting. The words “change for change’s sake” spring to mind.
Thirdly, yes, you may convey season’s greetings to our myriad staff. I will call a staff meeting this evening and distribute as fairly as I can your kind greetings. Rest assured, Sir, that they are/will be reciprocated.
Finally, I just want to draw our readership’s attention to the mightily moody sky they have over there in Yorkshire. Puts me in mind of a woman I once knew!
*1 Hamster is called Vladimir
Lying down on the job
Veteran correspondent on matters telegraph-polique, Andy Rowsell, recently sent us this picture of a dead pole. This one was in a ploughed field at Tregony in Cornwall.
Andy, you see, has the good fortune to work for those nice people at BT whereby he often happens upon such disaster-befallen poles. Thereupon he issues orders as to its repair/replacement/removal – but not before he’s got his trusty phone out and snapped a picture for the good and enlightened people who subscribe to these pages.
If there was a New Years Honours list for services to Telegraph Poles, I think he would probably be Andy Rowsell CBE by now. If he isn’t already of course.
The Mathematics of Telegraph Poles
I often wonder if many Polish people end up on here. Or those with an interest in Polish folk – especially those connected with the history of the telegraph as a means of communication, perhaps.
My wife says I wonder too much. In an effort to dissuade me from too much wondering my son bought me this rather excellent, long-lost book for my birthday…
“Maths and the Telegraph Pole” tells the story of the hard sums that people who put up telegraph poles have to do, in their heads, all the time holding on to lengths of wire. Things such as vectors, triangles, newtons, pythagoras, square roots and more vectors – bigger ones. Here for example is a really hard telegraph pole sum I found on page 40.
I’m afraid I failed my Bachelors degree at Telegraph Pole College and so all of this looks decidedly Egyptian to me. Or possibly even Polish!
Abergavenny on a winter’s day
Our African correspondent, Martyn Fielder (#0486), is back home in Wales, presumably for Christmas. And after many months absent from the aesthetics not just of our native telegraph poles, but our gorgeous landscape he sent us these two photos with the following note attached…
There’s no place like home and there is always a welcome in the hillsides when you come home again to Wales. Taking a welcome break from the relentless Summer of Senegal I am making the most of the cold and damp in the dark shadow of the Black Mountains.
Before you open the attached files, make yourself a nice TPAS mug of tea, sit yourself down somewhere comfortable and assume a calm, reflective frame of mind in order to appreciate these photos. Purity, simplicity and understated elegance on a hillside near Abergavenny.
Martyn
We couldn’t agree more. Not least the bit about TPAS tea. Last few days to get a Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society Mug before Dec 25th. There’ll be another 365 days after that, mind you.
FAQ
We get asked an awful lot of questions here at The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society. Not least, why do we bother? But many of the questions we receive are also about telegraph poles. Here are the answers to a few of them.
| How big are telegraph poles ? | No hard and fast answer. But 30ft (9m) would be a good average pole.
They are classed for width as (L) Light, (M) Medium, (H) Heavy or the less commonly used Stout. |
| How deep are they planted ? | A pole should be “planted” approx 6ft (1.8m) into the ground.
The doby mark is a notch 3 metres from the bottom of the pole. A pole then correctly planted would show the 3 metre mark at a height of 1.2 metres above ground level. Often “Depthing Tubes” are fitted which allow inspectors to check that those rascal erection contractors have buried them deep enough. |
| How far apart are they planted ? | Again, no hard and fast answer – all depends on the number of dropwires. But for railway modelling purposes think approx 60-65 yards on a straight run and 50-60yds on curved sections. Watch this answer for updates once someone has told me I’m wrong. |
| How long does a telegraph pole last ?
And how often are they tested?
|
There is no reason why a properly treated pole shouldn’t last 100 years. We know of one that was “planted” in 1908 and is still not even classed as decayed.
They are tested first at 12 years from new then on a 10 year rolling cycle of inspection. The inspection is often scurrilously described as the pole being whacked with a hammer and the inspector listening for the dull thud of rot. However, proper inspection requires a sample boring remote from the ground line. Since 1964 telegraph poles have been affixed with a testing cycle sign (see left). This one was last tested in August 2006, test cycle G. |
| What does the green ‘C’ mean?
|
This pole was not planted deep enough. It is classed as shallow, climbable. |
| What about a red ‘D’ then?
|
This pole was found to be defective (likely decayed) at its last inspection. It is marked for replacement, as and when! A pole can be defective because :
A. It’s rotten. |
| And what about H?
|
The H is for hazard. unlike a Z pole where the engineer could position his or her ladders to eliminate the hazard threat, the H pole can only be worked on through use of a hoist. If you’d like to see what the hazard is in this example click right here.
Possibly no longer in use.
|
| Z Poles?
|
If there is a ‘Z’ plate on a pole it means there is a hazard next to the pole i.e. a spiked fence, but the engineer can still position his ladders in such a way as to reduce the hazard rendering it safe to climb.
Thanks to Disco Dave for the H & Z pics and to Campbell Brodie for further info. |
| What do all these marks mean?
|
This pole belongs to B.T.
The horizontal notch is the “doby” mark, ie 3m from the bottom, 1.2m from ground level It was preserved (in creosote) in 1999. It will have been planted some time after that due to the pole lying in the yard until the lazy buggers finished their hand of cards to go out and plant the thing – anything up to 3 years later. Apparently the 2I indicates which woodyard the pole came from*
*Thanks to John Paine for this info – he has mislaid his definitive list of woodyards and codes. It’s probably in the cupboard in the garage. Or under the stairs. |
Then what about these?  |
These are just the sequencing numbers for this pole in a run of poles from the exchange / branch. I bet there’s one numbered 5 or 7 nearby. |
| Who is responsible for telephone poles? | B.T. Openreach. NOT the Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society. We just admire them. So if a pole near you has fallen down, or something has dropped off one onto your car windscreen then it is nothing to do with us. |
| What about electricity poles? | Your local power company. Around here (in Wales) it’s Scottish Power. Presumably they have Welsh power in Scotland. Anyway, see previous answer pertaining to “nowt to do with us”. |
| Are the markings (or the crossarms) on a telegraph pole always on the side nearest London? | Yes, absolutely. Except for all those where they’re not of course. |
| Does the Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society have a BIBLE? | Absolutely we do. It’s called “The Telegraph Pole” by W.H. Brent B.Sc (Hons.) A.M.I.E.E. and you can read it <HERE> |
| Thanks to : Disco Dave & Campbell Brodie* for updates to these FAQ pages. And to Pete Gerrard aka Treebore for bringing along our bible. |
* Possibly the same person
Twittering Telegraph Poles
We’ve finally given in! Kicking and screaming we have moved into the 21st Century and signed up for a Twitter account. We have no idea what it is or how it works. But there is a link on the side just there on the left. And if you click it and do something else then apparently you can hear our every thought. I’m not sure I like that, but it’s supposed to be progress, and I’m told I have to be in it. So there.
Twitter at us here…