Matt Price of Grass Valley, Oregon writes about an exciting find in his area. He found two insulators that are new styles for the M-Chart. They were still in service on a line that was built in late 1906 to supply electricity from a hydroelectric plant known as the Fremont Power Plant to gold mines in the area of Granite, Oregon. Actually, the line was not put into operation until 1908. 

Both insulator styles are shown below. One is M-3048 and the other is M-3285. As you can see from the photos, they are similar styles differing only in top skirt diameter. Each has a lily-shell bottom skirt. What makes then so unique is that several of each style have been found with the marking "LIMA, N.Y."!! The mahogany glaze color is typical of the Alaskan M-2640's. Also, they have the spiral machine marks on the inside of the bottom skirt that is so characteristic of Lima (see PIN article in the July 1988 issue of CJ). Lima markings are very rare and are only found on M-2254, M-2420, M-2640, U-376, U-519, U-648, and U-705.

The following photos show the unusual pins that were used with the two Lima insulators. The pin on the right in the next photo consists of a cast iron cone with a bolt that screws into a metal thimble cemented in M-3048. The pin on the left has standard threads and was used with M-3285. Note that the bottom of this pin is a cast iron cylinder with a lip at the top. The pin was held in place by the weight of the insulator and cable, and the lip kept the pin from pushing through the crossarm. The next two photos show the pin used with the respective insulator.

Pin on left for M-3285 and pin on right for M-3048.

"LIMA, N.Y." marking found on M-3048 and M-3285.

Matt also found several 2-piece styles. The photo below shows a five multiparts with M-2254 on the left with four other insulators that are similar to M-2260. The two on the right have the incuse marking "V" on the firing rest on the top of the crown.

The last photo shows two M-2340's. The one on the right was made by Ohio Brass. It has the pretty mottled reddish-orange glaze typical of insulators made for Ohio Brass at the Akron plant during the 1907-1910 period.

Steven Kella writes about a very unusual 2-piece insulator. As you can see from the photo below, it has an extremely long lily-shell bottom skirt. I had to stretch the M-Chart a bit to fit this one in as M-2395 since it is such an odd size. This insulator is of an extreme design with such a small diameter top skirt and greatly extended bottom skirt. The ratio of height to diameter is nearly 1.5. You may recall from my book, Multipart Porcelain Insulators, that height to diameter ratios greater than 1.0 created problems with electrical puncture in areas where lightning was prevalent. In the early 1910's, this problem was solved by making the diameter greater than the height to allow flashover before the insulator was stressed to the point of puncture. So, M-2395 must be of very early vintage most probably circa 1905.