Jim Starkweather reviews MiniArt's Telegraph Poles diorama accessory.



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Thanks!

Not sure where the idea came that we don't have these poles in the US or Canada.

They are everywhere. Before the advent of the telephone, all poles and lines would have been telegraph. Once the telephone became mainstream the telegraph lines would have been replaced with telephone lines, most likely the same lines in fact, and would have shared them with the power lines anyway.

Not sure if we had the insulators like we see in the kit, or the pole design as they are mostly European, but we surely had something similar, and still do have many similar looking poles still existing today.

This set is nice and the wooden poles have good grain detail with occasional knots and splits, but unfortunately they are moulded in halves - top half and bottoms, requiring puttying and replacement of detail. I' m considering replacing the kit poles with suitable wooden dowel.

Hi Scott,
Sorry I didn't mean to imply we didn't have utility poles like these in use in North America. What I meant to convey was the more European usage of 'telegraph' as any means of wired communication. Someone can correct me if I am wrong on that but I believe in WW2 (and beyond) the term 'telegraph pole' also include telephone lines, etc. I think the term died off here as the term telegraph was more associated to the Morse-style telegraph system. Where as in Europe and I assume to industry folks they use the broader definition of Telegraphy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraph

Cheers,
Jim