Hi, I'm an insulator. I held the wire up on telegraph poles. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll start at the beginning. I was made at a factory on October 8, 1907. I heard about a railroad being built. It needed a way for the workers to communicate. That's what I would do. I would hold the wire on the poles.
                                                                                                                                                                 

I was put up a few days later and I started to see workers leveling the land. Then they shoveled out gravel. Then they put wooden ties. They held up the rail, which works laid soon after. Then I head a whistle, and the pole shook a little. It was the first train. It was a small steam engine carrying important passengers to celebrate the opening of the railroad.

I started seeing many other freight and passenger trains with bigger and bigger engines and longer and longer trains. Then one day, a train carrying poles, wire and more insulators came and a crane started to put them up. Then a buzzing sound started and shortly a strange engine came. It had a pole that touched the wire. It used the electricity in the wire to run its motor. The steam engines still ran, but they didn't use electricity. Both keep getting larger until a new type of engine came to be tested. It didn't use electricity or steam. More of the new engines went pas and the steam engines almost stopped. Bigger and bigger units of the new engines (which I found out were called diesels) arrived.

One day a train came and started taking down the electric wire and poles. It took down my wire, too. The workers used radios instead. Then there were only diesels running.

Soon, the diesels started to get dirty and rusty and dirtier and rustier. Then one day an engine with new paint went by, but some of the hold engines did too for a short time. The railroad had lost money and combined with another to make a bigger railroad. Soon the new engines also got dirty and rust, and then stopped coming.

After the trains stopped, the tracks were pulled up and I sat in the woods for many years until one day a man climbed up my pole and took me down. I stayed at his house with other insulators. Then the man gave us to a place called a museum, where I now live.

Now people who like trains come to see me and the other insulators. We are cared for here at the museum. And best of all, I get to see some of the trains that I saw running when I was on the pole. It is fun being an insulator.

Editor's note: 12-year-old Adam Chilcote was a participant in a Crown Jewels writing contest for kids last summer.