Virginian Railroad Telegraph Calls ... at Last

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Like many who have struggled to bring synthesis to fields of information with diverse data and sources, I have wrestled with the Virginian Telegraph Calls ever since Clyde Weatherly, the VGN Operator/Leverman at JK Tower, gave me a typewritten list in the 1970s.

Clyde's information came from betwixt his ears: He was a 1939 (I think) hired telegraph operator on the VGN Norfolk Division. In the 1970s, there was little other information on the topic save living memory.

And then came the wonderful digitized world, with its Internet and scanners and digital archives and E-mail and discussion lists. All of which have made "doing history" faster, easier, more productive, less frustrating, and vastly more rewarding.

And thus it was that I set out to make one grand synthesis of the Virginian Telegraph Calls. After that task was begun, I realized that Mr. James B. Blackstock, of Roanoke, had already done a vast amount of spadework, been through all the VGN Time Tables in the N&W Archives, and had done the tedious and arduous work of putting the data into a tailor-made Excel spreadsheet.

With Jim's permission, I adopted his file as my working basis, and the end product (almost exclusively Jim's work) is attached as a PDF. The few little things I changed, Jim will probably never notice.  New data is always welcomed.

Thank you, Mr. Blackstock !

-- abram burnett,

"Three and Four Went in the Hole,
to let the Drags by, Haulin' Turnips."
     --- H. Reid
.
.
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