I found out early in my collecting life how important permission is when taking insulators off railroad property.

During my summer break from high school in June, 1975, a friend and I planned to go to a neighboring town and follow the Conrail tracks into the countryside and poke off the poles as many insulators as we could in a day. We were about a mile from town and halfway through the hunt when a Shelbyville City policeman spotted our car parked at the railroad crossing. Inside our care were the boxes of glass retrieved from the closer poles. We did not see the policeman until he brought his backup with him to the tracks to where we were. He asked us why our car was parked at the crossing. Of course, whether we answered him or not, it was obvious what we were up to. On the ground between the rails our long wooden pole laid with one end wrapped with rubber bands which helped unscrew stubborn insulators and then lift them up off the peg to drop into the other person's hands. Also, we had several boxes and newspapers with us to pack the glass in that we found. Could you imagine the size of the butterflies in our stomachs when he asked if Conrail gave us permission to do this? I told the policemen that we did not ask to remove the glass and felt that Conrail did not care about insulators without wires. Well, that didn't wash with them, so we were told to "go downtown" with them. They followed us in their cars to the Shelby County courthouse and "oh my gosh" to the county jail. My friend and I thought we were about to be sentenced to death because of our "insulatoring." Each of us was taken to a room where a policeman talked to us individually and "sweat out" the details of that day on the railroad tracks. Then both of us saw a circuit court judge who gave us a sermon on trespassing. We were released with no charges or fines and no insulators. I swore off insulators for life, but that collecting bug bit me again a couple of years later.

In the spring of 1983, I was laid off and had time on my hands, so I wrote Conrail for permission to take insulators from a line that runs through Columbus from Indianapolis to Louisville. Remembering the lesson from eight years ago, I knew that I should not take any insulators without written permission or even be on a railroad track at all. A couple of weeks later a letter from Conrail arrived. At first I thought it would be a nasty answer to my inquiry since I was on their property illegally before, but the answer was "yes." I guess they hold no grudges or they are very forgiving. In the envelope was a document that I had to sign releasing them from liability if I got injured or damaged other property. They gave me three months to take what I wanted. Of course, I did not "look a gift horse in the mouth" so I took only glass. During the period given me, I ran across eight law enforcement officers from four different agencies. Fortunately, I copied the permission letter itself and carried it on me and in the car. In the first week on the line around a town called Amity, a county deputy, a conservation officer and a state trooper walked up the line to me and asked me what I was doing. Even though I had all the paperwork necessary for the officers to see, my heart still sank into my stomach because of the thoughts I had of eight years ago when I saw badges and police cars. They asked me if I worked for the railroad or utility company, and I said, "No." I suppose they thought they had a real catch here. But I produced the paper, and the deputy had me follow him to his car so he could call Indianapolis to find out if it was real. Shortly thereafter, I resumed walking the line. Halfway through the period I was on a pole around Edinburgh. It was the same day as the big eclipse, and I was buzzed by a State Police helicopter. He was close enough to me that I could read the smaller numbers on the aircraft under the Police decal. He left, and I heard no more about the incident. A few other times Columbus city police and state police officers asked me what I was up to. At one point I asked a state trooper what would happen to me if I did not have permission. He said that I would be charged with trespassing on government property and theft. He was one officer of two who did not actually ask to see the letter even though I pulled it out and tried to hand it to him. But that did not happen every time, and I am very glad I had that piece of paper with me the entire time.

Since the Conrail experience, I have been on a couple of private company railroads and some of the people I talked to thought it was strange for me to ask for something that they did not care about. I did explain why I had to have something on paper stating that I had the right to be there. If railroad detectives did not catch me, I felt some other agency probably would. In some cases, farmers or utility company personnel would ask me why I was there, especially if the line had their property bordering it. Railroad engineers asked questions, but since some of them probably picked up insulators for their own collections, they understood why I was on a pole. They could see I was not a copper thief since no wires were on the glass.

Many collectors have taken insulators without permission and gotten away with it. Some have been caught and faced worse consequences than I did. My advice to the searching collector trying to find glass on railroad property is: Get formal written permission signed and sealed by a notary and carry it with you. Insulators are not worth time in jail. The rewards of insulator collecting are best found on the "right side of the law."