Yesterday's Mountain Finds, Early Power Porcelains

By Jeff Lisenbee; posted September 28, 2008
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Got out to some fine fall weather and some successful hunting yesterday, and came up with these nice items. The mustard/light tan glazed piece is U-926A and is stamped with the Fred Locke 7-1 marking, which is the first I've ever found marked as such. The many others of these I've found through the years had the 6-date marking. The unipart on the rotted side pin still has the very thin gauge steel phone wire attached, a black glaze, and is the first signal style porcelain I've seen or found with no inner skirt. The lug-eared guy is only a partial specimen, but is U-929 marked VICTOR, a very tough piece to come by. All peices found along side a line originally constructed in 1903 that had operated at 10,000 volts. This line also produced last weekend's U-944 in brown, as well as pieces of white Fred Locke U-675 'Ballerina' style insulators manufactured in January 1901 along with pieces of purple CD 106 W.G.M. ponies. The ponies, and I'm assuming the small black porcelain insulators were used on a two-wire phone circuit which was built a few feet below the power circuit on sidepins on the same poles.

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