Well, I don't know what you are looking at, the cable coming over to the off set is signal. It goes on, under ground and into the signal case and battery box on the other side if needed.

The "Pole Line" to the left, way to far to see what it is could be many things. It is signal as to the drop to the left shows. The pole line could contain high voltage for running trickle chargers down the line. It could also be a code line that had nothing to do with CTC. In the early years, a lot of telephone circuits were run in "Carriers". This was before microwave. You could have up to 10 phone lines and a dispatcher circuit on one pair of wires. The SP always added too many lines, up to 20, per carrier and then you got that hum and line noise. Oh, way back in the 60s, you still had Western Union on the railroads pole lines.

You can always tell a comm line by the transpositions every 250 feet or there about.

If everything is on one pole line, you can see different set ups and ID what they are for.
Carriers or code lines were usually on the bottom so a MofW could reach it with a clip on affair so he could talk to the dispatcher on a lay up stick. (I had one I donated to the Medford Telegraph Club).

Open wire, was a whole different kettle of fish. Construction, maintaining it, etc. You should try to get up a pole, thru a stack of 6 cross arms AND they are 16 pin arms. Took a skinny guy good on his gaffs.

I don't know how many of you knew that the SP was the largest, private phone company in the world, even thru Sprint. (That was a dumb sale but who was minding the store?)


Nudge