Re: C&O Section Crew St Louis 1964
Hello all I believe there is some pertinent info in the picture you posted. The telephone handset is that of an Automatic Electric type 40. If we go with the assumption that C&O used exclusively Western Electric telephone equipment or their successor GMP at the stations that would be a scisors gate desk stand with a head band receiver. I never saw anything different in the Thumb stations where I mostly hung out as a youngster. Thus this is not the railroad phone, at least not to me, but a commercial phone. GTE or Union Telephone, till about 1955 or 56 when it became General Telephone of Michigan) along with some independent telephone companies used AE station equipment (Telephones) but not Bell. Even after the war Bell used Stromberg Carlson, Federal, and North to supplement their manufacturing of Western Electric phones. Hershey and Hemlock are both in exchanges served by Bell. So to me this was taken somewhere else. That's my idea worth every cent that you paid for it! Hope it helps some. Dennis H.
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