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Morse and the Railroad Mystery Cache

Difficulty:
3 out of 5
Terrain:
2.5 out of 5

Size: Size:   small (small)

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Geocache Description:

Please note that The Frisco Highline Trail is open to non-motorized travel only and the trail is open during daylight hours only (sunrise to sunset).

Please rehide the cache the way you found it.

THERE IS NO CACHE AT THE POSTED COORDS, BUT THERE IS A TELEGRAPH POLE.

***Hidden With Permission***


The telegraph and the railroad were natural partners. The telegraph needed the right of way that the railroads owned and the railroads needed the telegraph to coordinate the arrival and departure of trains to increase the railroads safety, efficiency and save money.

Prior to about 1851 the U.S. railroad system was single-tracked and trains ran on a time-interval system. This system lent itself to two different types of accidents: head-ons and rear-ends. Double-tracked lines, which would have been very expensive, could eliminate head-ons, but not rear-ends, so the railroads would still need to run using a time-interval system. By using the telegraph, which was much less expensive, station managers knew exactly what trains were on the tracks under their supervision. This also lead to shorter reaction times to railroading accidents as well as other issues encountered along the line.

U.S. railroads utilized Morse Telegraphy. This system uses a series of dots and dashes of varying lengths to represent letter and numbers that would be typed out on a Morse key at the senders end and decoded from the sound emited from the Morse key at the recievers end.

Here are the final coords in Morse code:

_. / ..._. / _ _.. / ..._. / _________ / _.._ / _.._ / ...._
._ _ / _.._ / ..._. / .._.. / ...._ / _ _.. / ..._. / ......

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

NM fglyr

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)