Getting Lost
So, I went insulator hunting yesterday, woot woot, and it was a great time. The weather was perfection, just warm enough to be comfortable whilst walking/grabbing. I decided to go further north along the B&LE RR from where I last left off. Before yesterday I have hunted just about every square inch of line from Monroeville to Saxonburg (minus the big blue bridge, of course), which is probably 25-30 miles of track. I decided to go North of Saxonburg this time. First I ended up stopping in Curtisville to recheck that section for CREBs, which I couldn't quite recognize my first time through, but the only one I (think) I found was within the backyard of some old lady who denied me permission to grab it. Bummer too, it was a low pole and would've been a fast and easy grab. I briefly (ok, not so briefly) thought about just taking it anyways since it's not her property (not mine either though lol) but then I figured it was Lent and stuff... better wait till after Easter haha. Sooo I left it there and left Curtisville (almost) empty handed, I ended up finding an H.G. CO 162 signal that I must've missed the last time I was there (dunno how).
After that I got back in the car and followed a ton of back country roads, trying to stay near the tracks as much as possible. I stopped at a few crossings, but all of the poles were down so I didn't do too much hunting. I eventually drove and found myself in some quaint town called Renfrue. It was basically two streets (Main St. and Railroad St.) with a few houses on each, as well as an old Presby church of some kind and a tiny little school house. The railroad, which was an offshoot of the one I was originally following, ran right through town along, you guessed it, railroad street. I saw poles along the tracks so I parked at the old church and started walking. Didn't find too much though, I went one way and found a CD-145 beehive with some amber in it as well as an older CD-133 single petticoat signal (one of the earlier styles) but it was way too high for me to reach, and then I ran out of poles. I turned around and went in the other direction, finding another beehive and a Brookfield No. 48 CD-152 hoopskirt with TONS of snow. "Snow", I think I mentioned before, is the term for the chunks of white firebrick that sometimes find their way into the glass. At the end of the day, the glassmaker would sweep the cullet (glass shards and bits) off of the floor around the tanks and dump it in with the rest of the molten glass. He'd also sweep up all the rocks/whathaveyou and it would find it's way in there as well. This is most likely the case with the No. 48 I found as it is full of white rocks/bits of firebrick. Pretty neat.
That's it though, after awhile the poles ran out and disappeared so I turned around and got back in the car. I sat down and realized I didn't have a very good idea of how to get out of nowhere, PA so I figured the best strategy was to put some country music on my ipod and keep following the tracks as best I could. I did this and eventually ran into Evans City, PA, which also had a set of tracks running through town (and a Subway... the sandwich store). The tracks had lots of poles up in both directions as far as the eye could see, so I parked and figured I'd walk for about 45 minutes (it was 4 PM at this point) and turn around and try to find my way home. The first few poles on the edge of town had 5 wires strung up that went up and around a bend. Since I couldn't tell if they were live or not, I didn't touch 'em (safety first) even though I suspected they were dead (the insulation was worn off all of them). Soon I came to a downed pole and saw the wires lying there terminated in some water (it was swampy) and knew it was safe. I walked and ended up finding quite a bit.
One one of the downed poles I found two Hemingray CD-165s, one clear and one straw. These are worth $5-10 and there were 1-3 on just about every pole. I only took the two that I found on the downed pole, though. I also took one little CD-1049 spool that I found on a transposition bracket which I was able to pop off with my knife. It's pretty neat, it's only a few inches high/across. I was stoked to finally get one, after seeing them all the time.
Continuing on, I started seeing some broken insulators that I would've liked to have. I ended up finding more down the line, most notably green Brookfield CD-162s, which I found out afterwards sell for $15-20 (really good for "wild" insulators). There were probably about 2-3 on every pole for the 2-3 miles that I walked, and there was a pole every 10 yards or so. There were also blue-aqua ones and htey are only worth about $10 or so. I ended up taking four, two blue-aquas and two greens. I also came across a blue Hemingray CD-164 ($2) (which I took), a light-green Brookfield CD-162.3 ($15) which I took. It cleaned up very nicely and is now one of my favorite finds. Finally I found a single yellow-green "B" beehive which absolutely glows under light.
The whole time I was looking for a CREB CD-145 and, aside from that one the old lady said I couldn't have, I wasn't finding any. Around 5 o clock or so (15 minutes after my designated "quit" time) I was just about to turn around when I spotted parts of a broken CREB on the ground below a pole. Ugh. Knowing they were out there, I kept going and ended up walking till 5:15 or so before I came to a road crossing and turned around. Right before turning around I spotted a pole in the distance leaning out over a creek from a muddy, collapsed bank. The creek was running fast with melt and looked pretty deep. Up on the top bar of the pole was, of course, a CREB. I could see the embossing from the ground. Of course it was on the end oft he bar hanging a good 4 feet over the water. I could just barely barely reach it with my grabber and spun it a little. Could've easily knocked it off but for what, it would've just fallen into the creek and would've been gone. Frustrated, I left it up there. Well, I tried one thing, I found a container of some sort and cut it in half so it created a little basket and then stuck my grabber through the bottom of it. I tried to knock the insulator off and into the "basket" but it didn't work so well. It was slightly too far out of reach to have any control, so I just left it there for better days. Maybe I'll get a net or something, or maybe I'll get it this summer when the creek is (possibly) not as high and wadeable.
But anyways, the end of day tally was nice. I ended up replacing 8 insulators on the display shelf lol. Speaking of display shelves, here is what I want to do someday:
http://www.insulators.info/pictures/?id=237159796
He used a window, but a backlit display case would also be awesome as well. First I have to find worthy glass, though.
That's all for now, maybe heading to Morgantown this weekend to tie up some ends for my job and also to hang out with Ryan (and of course, hunt glass on the drive down).
Since my laptop is dead, I will post the pics of the hunt and the glass I found sometime this upcoming week.
After that I got back in the car and followed a ton of back country roads, trying to stay near the tracks as much as possible. I stopped at a few crossings, but all of the poles were down so I didn't do too much hunting. I eventually drove and found myself in some quaint town called Renfrue. It was basically two streets (Main St. and Railroad St.) with a few houses on each, as well as an old Presby church of some kind and a tiny little school house. The railroad, which was an offshoot of the one I was originally following, ran right through town along, you guessed it, railroad street. I saw poles along the tracks so I parked at the old church and started walking. Didn't find too much though, I went one way and found a CD-145 beehive with some amber in it as well as an older CD-133 single petticoat signal (one of the earlier styles) but it was way too high for me to reach, and then I ran out of poles. I turned around and went in the other direction, finding another beehive and a Brookfield No. 48 CD-152 hoopskirt with TONS of snow. "Snow", I think I mentioned before, is the term for the chunks of white firebrick that sometimes find their way into the glass. At the end of the day, the glassmaker would sweep the cullet (glass shards and bits) off of the floor around the tanks and dump it in with the rest of the molten glass. He'd also sweep up all the rocks/whathaveyou and it would find it's way in there as well. This is most likely the case with the No. 48 I found as it is full of white rocks/bits of firebrick. Pretty neat.
That's it though, after awhile the poles ran out and disappeared so I turned around and got back in the car. I sat down and realized I didn't have a very good idea of how to get out of nowhere, PA so I figured the best strategy was to put some country music on my ipod and keep following the tracks as best I could. I did this and eventually ran into Evans City, PA, which also had a set of tracks running through town (and a Subway... the sandwich store). The tracks had lots of poles up in both directions as far as the eye could see, so I parked and figured I'd walk for about 45 minutes (it was 4 PM at this point) and turn around and try to find my way home. The first few poles on the edge of town had 5 wires strung up that went up and around a bend. Since I couldn't tell if they were live or not, I didn't touch 'em (safety first) even though I suspected they were dead (the insulation was worn off all of them). Soon I came to a downed pole and saw the wires lying there terminated in some water (it was swampy) and knew it was safe. I walked and ended up finding quite a bit.
One one of the downed poles I found two Hemingray CD-165s, one clear and one straw. These are worth $5-10 and there were 1-3 on just about every pole. I only took the two that I found on the downed pole, though. I also took one little CD-1049 spool that I found on a transposition bracket which I was able to pop off with my knife. It's pretty neat, it's only a few inches high/across. I was stoked to finally get one, after seeing them all the time.
Continuing on, I started seeing some broken insulators that I would've liked to have. I ended up finding more down the line, most notably green Brookfield CD-162s, which I found out afterwards sell for $15-20 (really good for "wild" insulators). There were probably about 2-3 on every pole for the 2-3 miles that I walked, and there was a pole every 10 yards or so. There were also blue-aqua ones and htey are only worth about $10 or so. I ended up taking four, two blue-aquas and two greens. I also came across a blue Hemingray CD-164 ($2) (which I took), a light-green Brookfield CD-162.3 ($15) which I took. It cleaned up very nicely and is now one of my favorite finds. Finally I found a single yellow-green "B" beehive which absolutely glows under light.
The whole time I was looking for a CREB CD-145 and, aside from that one the old lady said I couldn't have, I wasn't finding any. Around 5 o clock or so (15 minutes after my designated "quit" time) I was just about to turn around when I spotted parts of a broken CREB on the ground below a pole. Ugh. Knowing they were out there, I kept going and ended up walking till 5:15 or so before I came to a road crossing and turned around. Right before turning around I spotted a pole in the distance leaning out over a creek from a muddy, collapsed bank. The creek was running fast with melt and looked pretty deep. Up on the top bar of the pole was, of course, a CREB. I could see the embossing from the ground. Of course it was on the end oft he bar hanging a good 4 feet over the water. I could just barely barely reach it with my grabber and spun it a little. Could've easily knocked it off but for what, it would've just fallen into the creek and would've been gone. Frustrated, I left it up there. Well, I tried one thing, I found a container of some sort and cut it in half so it created a little basket and then stuck my grabber through the bottom of it. I tried to knock the insulator off and into the "basket" but it didn't work so well. It was slightly too far out of reach to have any control, so I just left it there for better days. Maybe I'll get a net or something, or maybe I'll get it this summer when the creek is (possibly) not as high and wadeable.
But anyways, the end of day tally was nice. I ended up replacing 8 insulators on the display shelf lol. Speaking of display shelves, here is what I want to do someday:
http://www.insulators.info/pictures/?id=237159796
He used a window, but a backlit display case would also be awesome as well. First I have to find worthy glass, though.
That's all for now, maybe heading to Morgantown this weekend to tie up some ends for my job and also to hang out with Ryan (and of course, hunt glass on the drive down).
Since my laptop is dead, I will post the pics of the hunt and the glass I found sometime this upcoming week.