From The Heights. #30 From The Past.

Good morning everyone! It is a cool, cloudy morning here, but we did have another spectacular sunrise today. I did try for some more pics, but I was not too pleased with the results this time. I will check them better later today and perhaps I will show one of them tomorrow. Yesterday was nice and sunny and quite mild, above freezing anyway.

There is supposed to be flurries again today. I remember one cool, cloudy, late fall day. It was late October, no snow on the ground, but it was just slightly above freezing, so I decided to check another area along the railroad for insulators. I was by myself this time and I left fairly early in the morning. I drove down a seldom used trail as far as I could, then parked.

This is not the area of the story, but is another spot I went to another time.

From there I had to walk about 1/4 mile to the tracks, but it was nice easy walking. I got there in good time and began walking east and after half an hour I had found nothing. I was nearly ready to turn back but I came to a high hill and decided to check on top, hills were often good areas to find insulators for some reason. Climbing that hill was not easy though, it was very steep with dry loose soil and rocks.

I slipped many times and nearly fell once, but I finally made it to the top. I did start finding insulators right away and about half way along I spotted a pile of crossarms in among the trees. That was common to do way back, after all, why haul them out of these lonely spots? This turned out to be a great spot, there were more insulators than I could carry out of there.

This is looking the opposite direction of the above photo.

I carefully sorted the insulators and just kept the very best to take with me. I also found one insulator that was very different than the others. They inside threaded part was so different that it would not screw onto the wood pin very well, just part way since the wood pin was too fat to go all the way inside. That was kind of strange.

With the thousands of insulators my dad and I found over the years, we never saw one like this one. On another later trip further down this section of the railway, I found another one of these insulators, but in a different color. They are the only two I ever found. I later discovered they were used back in the 1880s and different wood pins were used for them originally.

This shows an insulator on a pin that would be attached to the side of a pole.

You probably do not know what I am talking about, it is a bit hard to explain. Now, I had to come down that hill, with my backpack quite full of insulators. I looked, picked out what I thought was the best way off that hill and began climbing down. I did not get far and I slipped. The rest of the way down was a bit of a blur, meaning, I fell the rest of the way.

I landed with quite a thud at the bottom and just lay there for a while groaning. Several of the insulators broke, but that odd one survived. My left arm and leg were paining terribly and I thought I might have to leave the insulators behind. After walking just a short distance I decided it would be best to leave most of them and come back another time.

These show regular upright pins with insulators.

So, I kept a dozen and headed back, very slowly. I did make it back okay, though I was 2 hours late, according to the schedule I had left. There was no serious damage done anyway, a few days later I was nearly back to normal.

I did go back and retrieve the insulators I left behind, and found some others as well. But that is a different story. And I was not alone that time. Hmm, the clouds seem to be breaking up a bit, perhaps we will miss those flurries. I hope you all have a great weekend and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2023 Steve McLeod.