When the Hull Municipal Lighting Plant required additional current in the mid-1910s a transmission line was built during 1915-1917 from a generation source in East Weymouth, MA owned by the Weymouth Light and Power Company. This was a double-circuit, approximately seven-mile-long line that terminated at Hull Light's facilities on Electric Avenue (now Edgewater Avenue) within an indoor substation completed in 1919 that provided 2.4kv for the town's primaries (this building still stands and adjoins with the Hull Light office). The forementioned transmission line operated at either 7kv or 13kv (archives are not sure) using many small Thomas multipart insulators. For a couple views of a survivor: [id=650507043] and [id=650508539]. Before this line was upgraded to 23kv with K-frame construction poles, here is an example of what the original line to Hull looked like near the intersection of Main Street and the later Tower Brook Road [id=632010497]. The Electric Avenue station was indoors to protect the electrical gear from the corrosive effects of the nearby seacoast. The step-down transformers within this station provided 2.4kv primary voltage that extended all around the town. The current purchased from Weymouth Light and Power supplemented that of the utility's generation, built about 1893-1894 when Hull Light was founded. It is not known when the town's light generation facility was closed however during the 1930s is probable. In the mid to late 1930s the Weymouth to Hull line was totally rebuilt from end-to-end by the Weymouth utility with new poles and heavy-duty hard-drawn copper cable (which still remains to this day although many of the poles have been replaced) and was converted to 23kv with an outdoor station constructed on the Electric Avenue premises. By the early 1960s, a step-down station from 23kv to 13.8kv owned by the Weymouth utility (then known as the Massachusetts Electric Company) was installed near the Hull town line and metered there so Hull Light could eventually and gradually convert the town's distribution to 13.8kv primary.

Thanks to mutual assistance via the New England Public Power Association, General Managers Clyde H. Curtis (Hingham) and Everett Lutzy (Hull); Line Foremen (Thomas Halpin, Hingham and Joseph Duggan, Hull) including linemen from neighboring Hingham and other communities assisted in restoring Hull's customers during the infamous 1978 blizzard. With this valuble help and coordination Hull was restored promptly; the exception damaged service entrances that required the customer's electrician to repair, very notably those with basement meters. Ms. Margarite ("Snooky") Johns spent several days in the Hull Light office ongoingly answering the phones without much rest comfortably assuring customers that electric restoration progress was continuing on a 24/7 basis. Hull had about 5,000 (mostly residential) customers at the time. The two feeder lines shown were totally caked with salt and ice all along its stretch from the Hull town line well into the town's upper penninsula (Hull is exposed to the coast on three sides). Caked, cruddy salt covered transformer bushings, lightning arresters and other live equipment easily allowing short circuits to occur. All had to be individually cleaned and inspected before each primary branch circuit was turned on. Without any load during restoration a Hingham Municipal Light lineman said: "You could see the blue glow from the leakage at night from the voltage that was turned on all along the main roads at night up in the bucket upon re-energizing with the distribution transformers disconnected at their cutouts (13.8kv)".

In this photo is the famed and historic (long gone) Paragon Amusement Park. It stood from the 1890s until 1985. In this photo you can see the two incoming feeder lines from Weymouth, MA. Also note that the park was fed from either of the two 13.8kv lines, noted by the primary cutouts on neighboring poles. In the event of an incoming line failure or need to shut one off for maintenance, the other (live) switch was there to keep the park going. Brown Ohio Brass fogbowl pintype insulators supported the town's 1960s upgraded circuits. Many of them remain in service and some can be seen in this image. These lines in the above photo are still there feeding the town as they always did, despite the amusement park no more than a piece of Boston history and condos on the site...

Please refer to: [id=664414088] and numerous other submissions for additional historical information about this community's small town-owned utility. Without these postings much of the fokelore about Hull Light would be forever lost.

All of this including Paragon Park are among my fondest memories :-)