We needed a better outdoor clothes line so I put my mind to the task. I remembered how good Ben Blevins' line pole looked so the idea was born and the solution became clear. After looking for a used pole w/o success and learning how expensive a new one was, my son Jim told me about a place where I could get a locust pole. I decided to just walk back into our woods and see what I could find. The result is this nice pole that is actually a limb broken off a very large oak in June 2010 in a severe windstorm.
The cross arms are from "field trips" over the decades as are the insulators. Ben Blevins (N&W), Landon Gregory (VGN) and Bud Huff (C&O) gave me suggestions for the placement of the different colors of insulators. On the lower arm, left end, there are the metal letters "440 olts." The v was missed when I got the letters from a discarded C&O pole. The insulators above the letters are brown and indicate the placement for 440 volts the railroads carried to power remote stations and shanties not served by public electricity. The center green ones are for the railroad's message line and the clear ones on the right are for the dispatcher's line. On the top arm, the two white ones on the right are for railroad telegraph and Western Union. Telegraph operation used the earth as the ground. The two green insulators on the left are "not in use" and the one with copper wire still around it was found that way by a C&O signalman many yeras ago and given to me.
Only three lines will be attached with the other ends going to the Texaco Gas Station/Country Store replica nearby. The lines can be lowered for loading and then raised up out of the way. February/March 2011
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