Sending a telegram, just like sending a fax, an e-mail or a letter, has the advantage you don't have to wait around and engage in perhaps a lengthy conversation when you have something else more pressing. Also, the same telegram can be sent to multiple address (generally paying for each one) and you don't have to engage in a colloquy with every addresses. In addition, there may be, as in this case, a specific desire not to engage in conversation.
In many cases there was also the desire to have a record of the sending and receiving of the message on paper.
There was also the question of finding a telephone in a distant city to call from. Many people would not let you use their phone for a long distance call, particularly businesses, and the alternative would be to find the telephone office in the town. Telephone credit cards were becoming more common about that time, but certainly not the broad coverage of the public they later became.
Note that rapid long distance connections generally were not especially common until at least the 1950s, and you would be waiting for the connection to come through. Manual connections were the rule, with the call being passed from operator to operator to an inward operator at the end office. The process speeded up quickly when operator toll dialing was introduced, but that was about the time that manual connections had also become more rapid.
Can you clarify why distance would be a significant factor in the decision to telephone or telegraph?
Not just large stations; the smaller the town the more important the railroad office would be for sending telegrams. In small towns that would often be the only telegraph office there.
Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com