New Team Member

Dr. Caillean M. McMahon, DO:  Telegraph Expert & Historian
She is the granddaughter of Sidney Kennedy, a telegrapher on the Pennsylvania Railroad from 1915 to 1962. She learned her first Morse letters, DF, from her grandfather when she was ten and has been a student of railroad telegraphic history since then.

Dr. C. M. McMahn holds a BS from Gannon University, a DO from Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, a fellowship in Forensic Psychiatry from Temple University and a visiting fellowship from Duke University.

Telegraph operations has been a part of her family for generations and still is one of Dr. McMahan’s passions. In her spare time, she continues to read and research railroad telegraphy, ultimately putting her knowledge to use re-creating a commercial telegraph office of the 1890’s as part of the Central House restoration in Palenville, NY; a railroad telegraph office of 1905 at Lake Shore Railway Museum main station office in Norther East, PA; and most recently, a recreation of Office JS of the Pennsylvania Railroad, also on the Lake Shore Museum grounds, that accurately represents an office of the lake 1880’s - early 1990’s. She is currently restoring equipment for a proposed telegraph office at the old Grand Truck Railway station in Island Pond, VT. In all of these efforts, original equipment appropriate to the era involved was restored by her or under her direction to working order. Authentic paperwork was reproduced or recreated, authentic cloth insulated wiring was used, even correct voltages are used on the line between JS and Office N on the Lake Shore Railway Museum grounds. Dr. McMahn is also a member of the Lake Shore Railway Historical Society and the Reading Company Technical and Historical Society. In addition, both she and her daughter know American Morse and can read code from sounders. Dr. McMahn will be helping us recreate historically accurate telegraph operations during the filming of Engineering Tragedy: The Ashtabula Train Disaster.