The Dale Telegraph Tower

THE DALE TELEGRAPH TOWER

The Dale Telegraph Tower: Haunted History

Previous location: Seven miles south of Savannah, GA in Chatham County on the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad.

Rumored to be haunted by two men who perished there. Reports of levitating objects, a trap door that unlatches itself and flies open, and a chair thrown from the upstairs window by an unseen force were documented in 1911. Or so the story goes…

I don’t believe this tower still stands today. If anyone has any other info, I’d love to hear from you! The first record of this place’s dark history I found is the blurb in Occult Review.

This is a speed build for fun made mostly out of discarded materials from other projects. It is in approx 1/30 scale and I built it to remind us of the poor souls who departed on its premises.

Materials include: Cardboard, foam, styrene, a skewer, match sticks, acetate.

"Fancy" additions: 3D printed leftovers, wire, static grass, various fake foliage.

I started with some foam board from Dollar Tree for the layout. I knew I wanted to replicate the old photo and wouldn't need much real estate.

I had a rough size of what the railroad ties should be and used match sticks to represent them. They were treated with a quick acrylic wash.

This is packaging from a lightweight corrogated box from Amazon, cut into rectangles and glued together to make a tower.

It ended up being larger than I'd planned, but it worked out.

I had some cardstock strips I didn't use from another project, painted them brown, and fashioned a basic window frame.

It was glued to a rectangular piece of plastic packaging (acetate) as were pieces I'd saved of 3D print purge lines that make up the glass panes.

These are basically just plastic strings (before the printer starts your project, it will spit out a "test line").

I made the inside look just messy enough for any photos that permeated the window.

I had this grand idea to show the trap door from the story, a set of bunk beds, a long table, and a fireplace.

That was waaaaayyyyy too ambitious because in the end, you couldn't even see the tower's innards.

After the match sticks dried, I painted two long pieces of square styrene rods to make the rails.

I realize this is not how rails look, nor is it entirely to scale.

I didn't plan on making this an in-depth project so it's not as precise.

Remnants of a square dowel were used as the "legs". I noticed that the tower was elevated somewhat but I couldn't make out the exact structure.

The tower was glued to the foam board and positioned like the reference photo. In retrospect, it's probably a little too close to the tracks but it looked pretty good in the final photos.

Broken coffee stirrers became the stairs on two little cardboard bases.

I realize there were about 7 stairs in the photo, but I didn't make the tower legs tall enough.

The tower was weathered with diluted acrylic paints.

I wish I had weathering powders at this point but alas, I did not own any.

I wanted this to look so much better, but I tried building it by hand and nothing looked that spectacular.

Because it was a quick build, I didn't take the time to model one in Blender or look for a file online to 3D print.

I bought a pretty hefty static grass applicator. No matter what battery I tried, the unit turned on but there was no static charge so I had to order a new one.

Here it just looks like I dumped a bunch of grass onto glue for no good reason. Fine time to learn your "new" equipment doesn't even work.

Moving on... I used some green paint to designate where I was going to place moss.

When I started crafting back in 2020, I ordered some bags of fake foliage. It looks ok, but I had to really press it into the glue because the scale is way too big for this tower.

I kept fall leaves to use for terrain scatter. They went in my old coffee grinder, which is specifically used for crafting. The leaf scatter was greener than I thought! Probably looks that way because I'm using it instead of a greyish tone ballast here, of which I have none. This was my first railroad themed build, so I don't have any of the typical or traditional building materials for it.

I used the same thin corrogated material to fashion a roof and weathered it with dark washes.

When I originally bought the first static grass applicator and different grasses, I picked out some green and yellow tufts as well for future use. I've been sitting on them for awhile now.

Here's the new guy doing his job the proper way. You know, the way it's supposed to work.

Though I don't know the identities or the backstories of the men who passed on this site, I don't think anyone should ever be forgotten to time or history.

Here's a small gesture of remembrance for them.

This was a 3D printed test door that I used. I don't like that you can see the print lines but for my purposes and photos it turned out decent.

The handle is just a regular small straight pin head.

Some more weathering of the stark white edges of the door and dirtying up the stairs.

To fix the grass and such in place, I sprayed isopropyl alcohol. I think this is 70% and I don't know if that's what's typically recommended? I've seen the percentages all over the board from different makers.

Definitely needed more water and could have used a dropper for more precise placement.

Noted for next time, as I'm not usually making projects with grass & whatnot.

Just when I thought I was done, I forgot I had to make the sign! I could have made it a ton better, but it worked for what I needed it to as far as a dilapidated representation.

Looking at the structure as a whole in this lighting, you can see each of the building materials I described. I did put a little bit of sand in the paint for the front of the roof because it was just too cardboardy looking. Yes, that's now a word.

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