I've had less and less time to get out digging over the past few years as life's twists and turns and shifts in priority lend less and less time for working with in general. Despite this, I still get out from time to time, and this autumn I've had several chances to go out and try my luck along the line.

Today I re-visited a pole site I've been digging for several years and still haven't satisfactorily finished it off. On this particular section of line everything has thus far been broken into pieces, evidently by rocks or perhaps the lineman's hammer. Nonetheless, it's been fun piecing everything together from shards, but it's certainly no small amount of work as finding every single shard from multiple insulators requires digging the soil up rather than my usual "probing" technique. The shards from several threadless and in many cases just under 20 early threaded pieces are found scattered around the badly rotted remains of the original pole stump from this site and others along this section of line... and not a single one of those insulators had survived the linesmen somehow.

Until today, at least. While extending the hole I had been digging around the pole stump out a further 2-3 feet, I hit glass up along the base of the rail bed amongst some rocks. Probably seems like a lot of work for just one complete insulator, but a moment like this can make it all worth while...

Looks like the dome from an early 143... and them threads sure do look sharp and kinda steeply pitched...

[id=452636565;Let's take a look!]