Ted, glad to hear you finally got an answer!
I wonder, did the pole mounted box that the engineer plugged into contain a hand-cranked magneto to ring the operator? I ask because there is no provision for signaling on your phone, at least not that I can see. I have seen portable boxes that contained a hand-cranked magneto and a ringer (and ringer cap) made by WE and others, so if the user also had one of those, they could plug in anywhere.
I was confused at first when Dave said "they aren't self powered." Then I remembered that in the world of Historic Telephones, there were phone sets that relied on voice energy for talk power (they were somewhat weak in the decibels department). These are sometimes referred to as "self-powered." To us guys with modern butt-sets on our belts, "self powered" means you provide your own talk battery (like your phone does).
If you find any more cool old equipment, wheel it on out (we can't enough of this stuff)!!
Jim
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Speaking from a secure undisclosed location.
Edit to add this: mbhydro, I just went back and read your earlier post. Dude, you nailed it right on the money!!
