Many years ago, Ron and I spent weekends "liberating" the old composition "Arizona beehive" insulators from a remote section of railroad in Arizona. Backpacking out the composition goodies wasn't difficult, but packing in the heavy Hemingray replacements we got from a distant abandoned line was a chore.

Additionally, the peg cobs more often than not stuck inside the beehives instead of staying on the iron pin, so we periodically had to go out on "cob hunting" expeditions to yet another abandoned line, even though we could later salvage some cobs in one piece from the beehives. 

On one particular stormy Saturday I trotted up a 30-footer in a stretch of the hilly and curvy route. There I was sitting up on the crossarm with a slight problem. First of all, when I untied the line, it just floated in the air several feet above the arm. Worse, I had run out of cobs, and this cob stuck inside the beehive. Drad it. 

So there I was in the cold wind and drizzle trying to get that stuck cob out of the old beehive so I could get things all put back together properly on the line. Ron was on the ground up the line a couple of poles, contemplating the next goody he'd found, when he started yelling at me.

I yelled back to him downwind, "So you say it's going to rain some more; so what?" Then he started frantically waving, cupped his hands and yelled again as hard as he could through the howling wind.

I couldn't see what his problem was as I yelled back, "You say the rain is coming? So what, I'm already soaking wet." As I went back to my work with the pliers, cussing that stuck cob and my precarious position in that strong wind, I just happened to look up and then discovered what Ron's problem was. Just through the nearby cut and around a bend, I saw those big black puff-puff-puffs of a train struggling up the grade! Simply incredible, since the tracks were heavily rusted, and we figured this old shunt route was replaced with the one in the valley below and was no longer used. 

Short of an accidental free-fall from a gaff cutout, I surely set some sort of a world record for descending a 30-foot pole and burying myself under the nearest thorny bush. After the (t)rain passed, we studied that line floating above the arm, but it was now blowing like a tornado, and the bottom dropped out of the clouds. We had to give up. On the long hike back to our vehicle in the rain, we noted for future reference how quickly the rain on the rails heated by a passing train caused an instant heavy rerusting! 

The following weekend, we made the 95-mile drive, plus the 3-mile hike, back to that trusty old 30-footer. As I buckled on the hooks, Ron made some rash comment about "no rain coming this time". After trotting up the pole, I installed a new cob and a shiny Hemingray-42, pulled down that floating wire and made a perfect Western Union tie with a shiny new tie wire. This time, I very leisurely descended the pole, unbuckled the hooks and said to Ron, "Well, I guess we can hike back out and drive home now -- even though there isn't any 'rain' in sight this sunny day."