It has been a number of years since Elton Gish sent me an old trade journal article on the 1910 era Tennasee Electric Power Co. Hales Bar dam and transmission line ... Finally after years of reserch and a full week and a half of archeological digging and hunting the line, Jeffery Kramer and I have been able to reconstruct a few of the unique insulators designed for this line ... here is a photo of my progress on one of the marked New Lexington specimens with an alredy assembled thomas waiting in the background tfor the finishing touches ... Although many hundreds were used on the line, finding them proved to be a daunting task as the pieces were widely scatterd at each tower site and in many cases were removed altogether long ago . After many days of hard work we were only able to find enough pieces to reconstruct about half a dozen specimens of both of Thomas and New Lexington manufacture . (these are the first reported four part marked New Lexingtons ) Here is a link to a photo of one http://www.allinsulators.com/photos/Porcelain/M/4400-4499.html#M-4412

These insulators are destin to remain rairities as they were used only on this line and as far as we can determin, none were saved or survived beyond the early 1920's . All evidence sugests these sufferd the same fate as most other early large pin types on steel tower lines .... Namely they failed from the heat of lightning induced power arcs destroying the insulator skirts or puncturing the insulators internally . one might consider this line to have been the swan song of this type of line construction ,,, namely steel tower lines with massive first generation pintypes . . It was around this time that faliures on these lines became so troublesom that there was a rapid shift to suspension type construction . I suspect this line was in the planning and design stages several years befor it was built and if it had actually been designed in 1910 it would have ended up as a suspension line insted .

...And so my nearly 5000 mile spring road trip is over and I sugsessfully brought the pieces of a few of these back to Seattle for cairful reconstruction and restoration ... Thank God for the drop in gas prices this year... A lengthly article or sereies of articles on this line and our hunts will be publiushed soon.!