My First Insulator Find

By Austin Welch; posted July 13, 2017
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This Armstrong CD 155 to most is a $1 insulator, but to me it is priceless because it's got a story, and it came from my hometown. This was my first (and only so far) insulator find in the wild, and when I seen it sticking out of the ground, I knew exactly what it was, because my pap was a big collector prior to me becoming interested in this hobby. When I found it, I had noticed it had a lot of damage (scratches) from ballast off of the railroad mainline. This one was found at the very end of the retaining wall, and I have it cleaned as nice as I could. In the fall, I am going to walk back, and try to look for more while weeds are down. The poles were actually taken down by Railroad MoW sometime back in the 90's. Now I've made the "Millville" insulators a specialty, and its the main thing I collect. I found a picture that shows these poles. For the railroad enthusiasts, the Library of Congress says this was a freight station, but a fire map from 1910's shows that this was a foundry, and numerous local sources say that there was a combination station and shelter a half mile west of this picture. https://www.loc.gov/item/pa2743/

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