Alberta Railway Museum: Trains & Telegraphs
Sun, July 6
10:00am-5:00pm
Fri, July 11
10:00am-5:00pm
Sat, July 12
10:00am-5:00pm
Sun, July 13
10:00am-5:00pm
Telegraphs have been in use within Canada for over 170 years. The first telegraph company in Canada was the Toronto, Hamilton, and Niagara Electro-Magnetic Telegraph Co, which was founded in 1846. Telegraph communications played an important role in Canadian railway history. The Canadian railway companies quickly adapted to the use of telegraphs. Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railways had their own telegraph communications lines established. The telegraph provided nearly instant communication; this provided information on things like the arrival and departure of locomotives. The telegraph operators were essential to keep operations running; they required the knowledge to translate dots and dashes of morse code into fully coherent sentences. The poles also served a purpose along the rail lines, providing a way to calculate how fast one was going. In the days before home phones and easy long distance The public sent telegrams from railway stations for urgent messages, such as the news of a birth, death, or travel plans
Visit the Alberta Railway Museum for a hands on telegraph demonstration. Visitors will be able to key in and send a message over the telegraph. A brochure will be presented containing information that has been researched about the history of telegraphs in connection to rail history.
