I was struck by the title of this kit, so I decided to do a little research. The term "telegraph" pole in Europe is essentially what we over in North America would call a "telephone" pole.
Even though we don't have many of those today.
And when we did, they usually were shared by the power companies as well, making them "utility" poles. However during WWII, telegraph poles were essential to communications. The military would need many lines for communicating with the many units, thus multi-line telegraph poles were required.
the kit
This kit from MiniArt provides you with four uniquely styled poles. Since there are 4 matching sprue sets included, you can easily create your own configuration of poles with those that match.
the review
There is some noticeable flash on the kit supplied to us. It's nothing too troublesome though, and all the fine detail pieces appear to be flash-free. Speaking of the fine detail pieces: there are many wire-thin ceramic insulator components that will probably fall into the "challenging" realm of model building. However it's the nice attention to detail like this that makes this kit superior to say the old Tamiya pole we are probably all familiar with.
SUMMARY
Highs: Good detail in both wood grain and the insulator points (where the wires connect).Lows: Some flash was present on one area (middle) of our sprues.Verdict: Overall this is a very flexible kit allowing many different combinations.
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About Jim Starkweather (staff_Jim) FROM: NEW HAMPSHIRE, UNITED STATES
I started building models in 1971 when I was 6. My first model was a 1/32 P-40 Warhawk. Revell I believe. From there I moved onto the standard cars, Apollo spacecraft, and other kid orientated kits. I don't know what got me started on Armor. I must have seen a Monogram tank kit one day and said "Mom...
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: LINK
Cheers,
Jim
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