Another who can tell me what this is

[who_dat73]

Brakie I am sure you will be able to ID this for me but if not anybody else wanna give it a try I bought it from a guy that said it was a RR telephone?? but trying to figure out what it is and how it works????
I am thinking from the OD green bag it came in it might be military issue but I have no idea the label on the top reads

Model 4565 uniphone
portable telephone set
Western Railroad supply Co. Chicago 8
Remove this side for inspection or service
Remove left end to renew batteries
and it uses 2 d batteries and has aligator clips on the ends of the two wires coming out of the one side and the hand held has a push to talk buttonlooks to never have been used altho the hand held wires inside the box have been pulled loose so I will have to find someone that works with old wires that can fix it because I have never seen anything like the stuff that these wires are made from..
so anybody know what I got for my ten dollars and what it is for give me a shout and thanks for the help
Mike

 

[Torpedo]

A picture would help, but from your description it sounds like a rather old signal maintainers portable telephone set, a railroad version of a telephone lineman's handset.

 

[who_dat73]

I agree I dont know what happened but all of a sudden I cant upload photos any more I still know how to resize but how do I compress the file size so it will take it ??

 

[Torpedo]

Resizing downward will automatically reduce the file size. You just have to reduce the photo enough to get below all the forum maximums, which include height and width limitations, as well a pretty small file size requirement.

 

[brakie]

That sounds like a portable phone they would use at train wrecks and other construction sites..This was used so the assistant road foreman could keep in touch with the tower operators or dispatcher.You see 2 ARF would dispatch trains through the derailment or track construction site.There would be a ARF on both ends.There may have been a temporary crossover installed so the trains could use the other main. Of course a shoo fly track could be used as well..

 

[who_dat73]

lets try this

 

[kf4jqd]

That is a telephone. I saw one on Ebay a few years ago that was used on the Rock Island. All you do is clip 2 wires to the pole and you are in business. Radios back then were very large and used alot of power. For the most part they sent CW (Morse Code) A friend of mine, who got me into Ham Radio, has the military version of these. They are pretty cool. His son Chris and I played with them in our childhood

Andy!

 

[jetrock]

Looks a bit like what phone phreaks call a "beige box" or lineman's handset: clip the clips to a phoneline and use the built-in dial to make a call. I assume this is even simpler, with only a direct line to speak to the dispatcher.