View allAll Photos Tagged insulators
To many people they were telephone poles, but to the railroad they were a pole line or a code line. The wires strung on these poles were integral to the communications network of the railroad whether was carrying telephone circuits, telegraph lines or wires used to line signals.
Railroads have switched to other communications technology and removed most of their once ubiquitous trackside poles. This particular pole is part of a display at a railroad museum in Conneaut, Ohio, next to a former New York Central line.
Many people have on display on their homes one or more glass insulators used on the poles.
The base of insulators on the shelf above becomes halos for insulators below which look like angels with wings from Tom Katonic's collection.
Illinois McGraw Electric Porcelain Company
Found along the former Rock Island near the shop I work at in Iowa City.
A style of insulator produced for telegraph distribution from the 1880's to the 1910's. This CD style was never a popular style or became a standard style and was only produced by three glass companies, Hemingray, Brookfield, and the King City Glass Works.
This particular insulator was produced by the Hemingray Glass Company in Muncie, Indiana, and possibly their older Covington, Kentucky plant in the 1880's-1890's, but would go on to produce this style until c1915 in Muncie.
Quantities of these CD 151 H.G.CO. cornflower blue insulators were used along the old Rock Island Railroad in Iowa, and the Great Northern Railway in Washington state.
I bought this one at the Mid-Ohio London show back in the late 70's, however, in 1998, I did picked two of the exact CD 151 cornflower blue insulators off the abandoned pole line along the old Pennsylvania Railroad that ran between Fort Wayne, IN and Chicago around the Bourbon and Etna Green, Indiana area. Both of these cornflower blues were medium to dark examples and in vvnm condition.
Embossing (F-Skirt) H.G.CO. (R-Skirt) PETTICOAT
Index # 070
A gaggle of Hemingray 43s in two of the several flavors in which they can be found are lined up along a wall. These all must have fallen off nearby poles sometime in the very recent past, as they were clean and sitting on top of the grass when I picked them up.
Another new insulator for my collection. I'm not good at identifying porcelain insulators yet, so I don't know what this is. It was found along the former Milwaukee Road near Rutledge, Iowa.
Forty years ago today I found my first glass along the bank of a creek just down the street from my house. I suspect these were dumped by someone rather than being used nearby. The assortment was Hemingray and Armstrong CD 129s and 155s, along with a pair of common brown porcelain cables. The insulator on the right is one of those pieces of glass, an Armstrong dated 1970.
To celebrate forty years of this nonsense, I wanted to pick forty Hemingray 40s. The only place I knew I could do so in quick and easy fashion was a 3.75 hour drive, so I hit the road around 2:30 this morning for a little sunrise pole harvest. Indeed I removed forty of them and hit the road back south. I don't have a pic of all forty arranged yet, but the one on the left is the last one that came down this morning.
11/7/2023
Detail from cornfield electric fence that is there to keep out the wild pigs. Moostal, Riehen CH.
In my set: Dan's Wired World
(Dan Daniels)
Part of a colorful collection of old telephone-pole insulators, accumulated over the years by the father of one of our good friends in the Alma 9th Ward. Photo taken in Tucson, Arizona.
(Footnote: This photo appeared in Explore on 12/31/05, although once again on a different page than the one indicated below by Christine Lebrasseur. I found it on page 8, and it may be on a different one now. But it most assuredly is there! And while I'm at it, thanks once again to the lovely and very talented Christine for bringing this to my attention.)
I unearthed these last April on the same abandoned line but several miles from each other. I posted lots of pics on insulators.info. I still haven't cleaned these yet, I guess I should get around to it.
That side pin was from a CD 143 Dwight I found on the same line.
I've had a smart phone for a year and a half now and it's so much more convenient to take on my insulator hunts or if I go bottle digging to shoot photos rather than my bulky Nikon D90,
I was always afraid of damaging the D90 so that why I never took many pics on my hunts especially the first few years I got into the hobby.
See the tall one on the top shelf? Top is porcelain, bottom glass. Value thousands of dollars.
view large
Found in an abandoned Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad yard in Horton, Kansas in 1979.
Years Produced: c.1880s-c.1956
This was taken just before I did a digital version of the photo, that can be found in my flickr stream. This was made using a Horseman L45 camera, and a Schneider G-Claron 210mm f/9 lens on Kodak TMAX 100 sheet film, which was processed using TMAX developer. It was then scanned using VueScan, and my brand new Epson V850 scanner. I'm currently using VueScan for a couple tests, since it's already installed on my system.
Locke and Sediver suspension insulators.. I got Lockes from a worker and found glass Sedivers in the wild..
A contractor cutting down BNSF poles pauses at a fence to someone’s backyard. The railroad goes through a rock cut here, and these people have claimed their backyard all the way to the edge. The pole line cut right through the yard. These guys had to remove two poles from the yard, and there was a “Beware of Dog” sign on the fence. After no canine type response, the chainsaw dude went into the yard and worked his magic. A couple minutes later these poles were on the ground, and I swooped in to remove the glass.
A friend and I followed this pair of contractors a lot in the 2000s. They got the contract to remove the pole lines, then sold the poles to locals, if the particular railroad allowed for that. BNSF did not want any of the material, so these guys sold poles, and often found farmers who would allow them to dump the crossarms and metal on their land.
As for the insulators, the guy by the fence told me some time well before this “the more of these G@# damn things you take, the less I have to fuck with.” So we took several thousand over the course of a few years, including this dreary December day nearly 19 years ago. More pics from this day will be posted eventually.
Also of note here is an example of Frisco’s pole numbering. The three horizontal bands represent three tens and the vertical is a five. This was mile 75 pole 35. A half hour later when the 76 mile post pole was cut, the homemade, hand painted 76 mile sign was also liberated. We got as many of these signs as possible as well.
12/20/2005
Bourbon, MO
A pair of Hemingray 660s sit in a swamp almost 21 years after this pole line was cut down in 1996. They went home with me, as did plenty of the swamp mud.
2/18/2017
I was out taking some photos earlier this Fall and looked over beside me and found this porcelain, electric fence insulator that was obviously installed many years ago. Judging from the rusty nail holding it in place and the amount of weathering on the wooden fence member, this insulator has probably seen it's share of seasons. Also, I am continually amazed as the ingenuity of engineers from generations past and the simplicity of things that were created to fill a need...
Three bracketed photos were taken and combined with Photomatix to create this HDR image. Additional adjustments were made in Photoshop.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” ~Jeremiah 29:11
Yesterday was my first day doing wet plate photography. Tintype workshop at The Image Flow in Mill Valley. Shot 5 plates. This is my favorite.
Taken with the new Ektar H35 half frame 35mm camera released under the Kodak name. Stylistically it's based on the Kodak Instamatic cameras from the 1960s and 70s.
This was expired, cross-processed Fuji Velvia ISO 50 slide film, the negatives were very dense and the image quality is poor.
An electrical insulator from my collection, marked Gayner No. 48-400. I found it along railroad tracks, the soot from steam engines has left black stain on it.
The newish begonia... my pal, Diane, gave me this fabulous begonia a couple of months ago. It's the child of one of hers. It languished on the far side of my pergola for a while and didn't do squat, but I finally caught on that it was getting too much sun and moved it to this side, where it gets more filtered rays, and it has flourished! I guess as soon as the frost hits, it'll be goodbye begonia - till next year - but for now, it's such a joy to behold from my kitchen windows and whenever I venture out the back door.