Porcelain Insulator News
by Elton Gish
Reprinted from "Crown Jewels of the Wire", January 1995, page 12
You may remember from November CJ that I am working on a value guide.
Actually more than 20 collectors have volunteered to help by cataloging their
collection so the listing of known unipart porcelain insulators in the value
guide will be as complete as possible. I will name these collectors later when
the project has been completed, but I do want to send out a BIG THANK YOU!! now
to all of you that have spent hundreds of hours cataloging your collection and
have returned my survey. I had no idea that my request would have been so well
received. It is obvious that all of you want a value guide. The work you have
contributed will make a large difference in the quality of the value guide.
Values in the value guide will be shown as a value range around the average
of everyone’s estimated values, e.g. $20-30. There are more than 2600
different unipart insulators listed. The final listing may have nearly 3000! I have been tabulating the results of everyone’s survey with my computer which
instantly totals the number of reported specimens for each specific entry. The
final count will give a fair idea how many of each rare insulator are available.
There are a number of rare insulators that are noticeably missing or lacking in
reports. If you have any of the following insulators, I would appreciate hearing
from you. PLEASE drop me a postcard or letter if you have any of the insulators
listed below or insulators with the following markings: “PITTSBURG”, “New
Lexington, O.”, “LIMA, N.Y.” Your name will be kept anonymous if you
prefer.
Only 1 of each of the following have been reported on the
returned surveys: |
None of the
following have been reported on the returned surveys: |
U-148
|
SOO
|
U-67 |
Fred Locke |
U-173
|
Pat. Apld. For
|
U-219 |
N-N (Thomas) |
U-241
|
Johns Manville (white)
|
U-219A |
N-N (Thomas) |
U-330A
|
Fred Locke
|
U-339 |
|
U-376
|
N-N (Etheridge patent)
|
U-392 |
N-N (Thomas, brown) |
U-410
|
|
U-395 |
(light blue) |
U-648
|
LIMA, N.Y.
|
U-407 |
|
U-675
|
Fred Locke (brown)
|
U-552 |
New Lexington, O. |
U-709A
|
Pittsburg
|
U-599B |
MACOMB |
U-820
|
(spiral)
|
U-705 |
LIMA, N.Y. |
U-927
|
Imperial
|
U-746 |
Pittsburg |
U-935B
|
Imperial date
|
U-962
|
|
U-936
|
THOMAS
|
U-966 |
THOMAS |
U-939D
|
Fred Locke (brown)
|
U-966A |
N-N |
U-954
|
|
|
|
U-954A
|
|
All threadless styles |
U-957
|
Fred Locke
|
|
|
U-961
|
|
|
|
U-966A
|
New Lexington, O.
|
|
|
I know that all of the above insulators exist and I know a few people who
have some of them. I do not have time to contact each of you individually to ask
what you have or if you still have a specific insulator. It would be interesting
to all of us if we knew about how many rare insulators are in collections. Please let me know if you have any of the insulators listed
above. Also, it is not too late to at least drop me a line with a small listing
of uncommon to rare insulators in your collection. Wouldn’t you like to know
about how many there are? Maybe you have a one-of-a-kind insulator or maybe just
one or two others are known. Desperately need to hear from you if you have
threadless styles.
Barrie Rufi (NIA #4016) just sent me several interesting photographs
of insulators that he has picked up while working the last 34 years as a lineman
for Utah Power & Light in the Ogden area. You might want to look back at PIN
in the September issue of CJ to see other early porcelain insulators found near Ogden. Barrie
has a couple of brown U-746 Imperials, many U-923 and U-923A Imperials,
several U-744's (made by GE circa 1895), and a couple of U-928 Boch Patent
insulators that he found in the area. Of particular note are two brown U-746
insulators each marked "New Lexington, O." Several of these were reported back in the 1970's from that same area but they were a light sandy tan
color. Barrie's two U-746's are a dark tan similar to the brown Imperials. I
have been trying to determine what common characteristics. can be attributed to New Lexington. Problem is
so few marked insulators have been found. The most common of the marked styles
is U-746 with maybe 8-12 known and all had the sandy glaze. There are three
different styles of two-piece multipart insulators and each one has a completely
different glaze ranging from sandy tan, tan, mahogany, and nearly black. You can
well imagine the difficulty in coming up with similarities that we can use to
attribute unmarked insulators to New Lexington.
Two dark tan U-746 insulators marked "New Lexington, O."
Barrie also reported another U-924 Imperial (discussed in Nov. CJ) and two white specimens of U-393 and U-393A
which were made by Pittsburg. He also reported several U-935A's and U-935B's.
He said that U-935A's and U-935B's on about 13 blocks of line in downtown Salt
Lake City were removed in 1966. The crew threw the insulators onto a flat bed
truck and threw them into a dumpster when they got back to the shop. Barrie was
only able to retrieve a couple of good insulators from the estimated 400-500 in
the dumpster! That is a story we all hate to hear.
Broken U-935A insulator in the center is a dry process
insulator made by
General Electric.
The two on the left and right are wet process U-935A's with
Imperial dates in March 1897.
Imperial U-935A's replaced poor quality GE
versions.
In the November 1994 CJ we reported another U-967 with a very beautiful light
caramel-colored glaze. Donald Groff reported that he also has a U-967 but his
insulator has a different glaze. The color is a very pretty rusty orange with caramel mottling. I would
guess that Donald's insulator was made a year or two later than the light
caramel-colored ones. This darker glaze is typical of very early Thomas insulators from circa 1905-1908. This makes four
known of the U-976 style.
Ben Kirsten turned in one of the most detailed surveys
for the value guide which he obviously spent hundreds of hours working on
cataloging his collection. He also sent a few photographs. One of his
photographs showed an insulator that has not been reported before in that color.
It is a M-2255 with a very dark glaze. Don't go thumbing through all of the last
several years of CJ looking for M-2255. Actually M-2255 has been reported before
but not in PIN. I have lost track of all the reports but I do know that Ken
Stefan reported the first one and Paul Axman (NIA #4961) reported a couple
he had found in Canada. I did see a couple of these at a show.
Up to now all of them have been the early Thomas mottled greenish-gray color
from circa 1905. They also have the blue-jean seam marks inside the bottom
skirt. Ben's nearly black-colored M-2255 is very unusual.
Unmarked Thomas M-2255 with mottled
greenish-gray glaze from circa 1905.
Dimensions are 7 - 5 x 6.5
Ben also reported an insulator similar to M-3536 with glaze color that looks
like it was made by Ohio Brass. The unusual thing about this insulator is sand
was applied around the tie-wire groove! Guess they planned to cement a metal cap
on it.
Ohio Brass Sim-M-3536 with
sand applied to tie-wire groove.
Early gray-glazed insulators are very uncommon to rare since they were
manufactured before circa 1910-12. Ben sent the following photograph of an early
gray M-3460. Both the gray M-3460 and the later model M-3460 with mottled
mahogany glaze have the blue-jean seam inside the bottom skirt. We think that
the blue-jean seam was not used much after 1910. The mahogany colored insulator
is a color more typical of Thomas production in the 1910's.
Two M-3460's made by Thomas circa 1905-1912.
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