Hull Municipal Lighting Plant, 1924, Old 7 or 13 kv Crooked Transmission Pole.

By Joe Maurath, Jr.; posted July 27, 2021

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This line was built around 1915. Its origin was a steam operated power plant in East Weymouth, MA and the line extended to the Hull Light Plant's facility on Electric Avenue (now Edgewater Avenue). The poles likely were pine; and from the generating plant two 7 or 13 kv circuits extended from it, insulated by small Thomas two-piece porcelain insulators using two-over-four-pin crossarm construction with 30-inch hardened flat steel braces. This line ran through Hingham, MA and was conductored with 2-solid copper until it reached a point on Main Street of that community (a municipally-owned one; the Hingham Municipal Lighting Plant) for a small substation that Hingham owned (near the present corner of Main Street and Tower Brook Road) and water pumping facility a bit further down heading towards Hull (note: the Hingham municipality did not have the capacity for the water plant so it was the customer of the private utility). Owing to lesser load downstream, after either tap-off point the original 2-solid copper was then 6-solid all the way to the Hull distribution plant. Hull built their own power plant in 1893 and by the teens more capacity was needed, so connection with the Weymouth plant was needed. By the late 1930s the feeder lines from the East Weymouth station all the way through its terminus in Hull was totally rebuilt at double-circuit 23kv using 2-strand hard-drawn copper. All of the poles were replaced; K-frame structures with suspension insulators along wooded stretches and Locke 1035s upon cedar poles that were alongside roadways. Some of the poles and much of the wire from that upgrade still remains in service (owned by National Grid to the Hull town line).

This photo was taken looking north on Main Street in Hingham, MA; the famous "Rainbow Roof" house is on the left. Tower Brook Road had not yet been constructed and when built, it extended where the old shacks in the background are. During the late 1930s this pole and its line were replaced by K-frame poles with AWG-2, 7-strand hard drawn copper supported by suspension discs (a few of these structures in that area still are in service). The rebuilt stretch of line ran pararell to the old line and several yards northerly from the original that you see here. At some point in the 1930s through the 50s the Hull generation facility was taken out of service and since then has totally depended on the present 23kv lines from East Weymouth (8-miles away) for supplying electricity to this seaside town's approximately 6,200 municipal utility customers (the vast majority are residential) having an estimated peak load of 13 megawatts..

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