Telegraph Calls

[benjamintickell53]

Each open (telegraph) station on the railroad had a one or two letter call which was used as an abbreviation to “call” the station using Morse code. These codes appeared on dispatcher train sheets and in the book “Official List of Officers, Agents, Stations and Mileage” of the Missouri Pacific. Call signs were more or less unique to a specific division or region and quite often were used again in other areas. For example, the call CF (Cairo & Fulton) was the designation for the telegraph relay office in Little Rock Union Depot. On the White River Division, CF was the call for Carthage.

On some railroads, these telegraph calls also appeared in employee timetables. Several of the Morse telegraph clubs have over the years tried to collect call signs for various railroads to preserve this part of history, but that effort has been sporadic and spotty, and as time goes on, these details are slowly disappearing. If anyone has compiled telegraph calls for any part of the railroad (or for any line that eventually came under MP control) please post the data here as a reference source.

Bill Pollard
[attachment=0:3dc12jx2]WRcalls-1.jpg[/attachment:3dc12jx2]

[benjamintickell53]

White River Division telegraph calls and other data from the 1925 book noted above.
Bill Pollard

[attachment=2:3ziu4f0d]WRcalls-2.jpg[/attachment:3ziu4f0d]

[attachment=1:3ziu4f0d]WRcalls-3.jpg[/attachment:3ziu4f0d]

[attachment=0:3ziu4f0d]WRcalls-4.jpg[/attachment:3ziu4f0d]

[benjamintickell53]

Telegraph Calls of the C&EI Railroad, courtesy of the Morse Telegraph Club.

[attachment=2:1pnr0h9l]C&EI RR Calls-1.JPG[/attachment:1pnr0h9l]

[attachment=1:1pnr0h9l]C&EI RR Calls-2.JPG[/attachment:1pnr0h9l]

[attachment=0:1pnr0h9l]C&EI RR Calls-3.JPG[/attachment:1pnr0h9l]

[mopac]

Thank you for posting this fantastic resource. Would anyone be able to explain the characters listed in the “business handled” column? I’m curious what T, F, A, I,O, N….etc. might indicate. Thank you again.

[benjamintickell53]

The class of freight handled…
A-Carloads and less, forwarded and received
N-no freight handled
L-less than carload only
I-carloads inbound
O-carloads outbound
C-company material
P-passing track

Kind of agency (also apparently appearing in that same column)
T-ticket
F-freight
Tel-Telegraph
Bag-Baggage
*-prepaid station, no freight agent
‘t’-coupon ticket station [symbol is actually dagger pointed down]

The letter N, S, E or W after station name indicates that freight depot or platform is north, south, east or west of track. I suppose that is necessary in case a car needed to be unloaded from a certain side.

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