You might be surprised. There's a certain overlap between old technology geeks. Indeed, one operation with which I have worked is hampered in the fact that they have a phone system installed throughout the property that is itself something of a museum piece by now, making it difficult for me to talk them into wiring some internet access into their office....... I think they finally got a way to hook up the credit card line.

In the U.K., several of the heritage railways go as far as operating the railway with vintage dispatching, signalling, and telegraph/phone equipment. The first places on British Rail to get high-tech equipment, radio electronic token block, were the most remote of the Highland lines in the mid-1980s.

Ideally, someone could arrange a mobile display about railroad communications, from lack of it in the earliest days to telegraphy to telephones to radio, which could be transferred from larger museum to larger museum for several years. One of these boxes would be ideal for part of such a display.

We have a couple of phone boxes at 9th St. One is a wooden C&O that we'll eventually have to rework. It's getting kind of rough. The other is a steel N&W that we use as a key locker.