Why are the telephone poles next to train tracks very short?
These are usually carrying only Telephone cable. In the beginning poles carried telegraph lines. In old photos of street scenes, you will see Telegraph poles carrying upwards of 12 cross ties or cross”T”s with 6 lines on each side or 12 per crosstie. It give the town a look that spiders have turned the entire downtown into a giant web. That’s 144 line of cable. As the telegraph progressed, mulitiple signals could be carried over each pair of cable and the number of lines reduced. Then with the telephone, even less was needed. Stringing electrical power along the same path, they both go to the same location, seemed logical. Today, you will see along the roadside three electrical lines at the very top of the pole, one under these three is the netural line. Then the next cables are fiber optic / telephone / basic cable. Railroads need only enough pole to get the phone line off the grade. Usually 12 feet or more. (Grade: the level of land, dirt.) Let Amazon know if this is a great or lame
We’re used to telephone poles being rather tall in built up areas and near houses, and they need to be — so that they don’t interfere with passing traffic. They need to be big enough to allow buses and HGVs to pass under them. Near a train track that’s not the case; there won’t be any passing traffic and there’s no need for them to be high enough to allow traffic to pass under them except at the points where there are crossings. Indeed, one of the reasons for placing them close to train lines is that it provides flat ground between places with high population density which isn’t being used for anything else, so they’re nicely out of the way.
