CAROL AND MARILYN CONDUCT INSULATOR
RESEARCH TRIP ON FOREIGN SOIL 
PART III

In the last episode of our trip we visited the VEGLA GLASS WORKS in Aachen, West Germany. And after I came back to the States I'd written Dr. Claussen, their Public Relations person, to inquire about VEGLA's insulator production. In October, her long awaited answer finally came, stating that she'd searched through all of the company's old records but could find nothing about their ever having made glass insulators -- at any time! She said once more that VEGLA produces only mirrors and flat glass for cars and buildings and that this had been true from the beginning! She added, "In 1936 different factories in Germany were merged together as one company called VEREINIGTE GLASWERKE and this group become the German subsidiary of SAINT-GOBAIN of France, who initiated the merger in the first place. The first VEGLA factories were in the Mannheim (1 953) and Stolberg (1956)." It is indeed disappointing to hold a VEGLA insulator in your hand and to be told that VEGLA never produced insulators. I asked Mrs. Claussen to keep digging!

Carol and I left Germany, and after a brief jaunt back up to Utrecht, Holland, where my broken wrist was again x-rayed and then fitted with a light weight cast fit for traveling, we headed south to Belgium. As we passed through the many small towns along the way, we saw hundreds of beautiful Belgian glass insulators up on the lines. The anticipation mounted and we knew Belgium was a good place to be! But the weekend was coming on and we knew that none of the electric companies would be open so we found a lovely "Bed and Breakfast" place called Heidehoff in the charming little village of Herselt. It was to be our headquarters for the next five days as we checked out some of the surrounding areas for good glass. 

We spent Saturday and Sunday locating the electric companies in each of the small towns nearby so we would be ready to go full bore on Monday morning. And on that day our first stop of any significance was at Intercom in the town of Mechelen. Intercom is one of Belgium's largest distributors of electricity, gas and cable television. We were able to speak with one of the managers there, a Mr. Van de Perre, who said that no current insulator stock was stored there and none of them in the scrap pile were available either because all of the dumpsters had been emptied a few days earlier. 

He looked at our photos of glass insulators embossed VERLICA BELGIUM and thought they must be old but he knew nothing about the manufacturer. He doubted they were still being made because he hadn't ordered glass insulators for Intercom for 20 years! All replacement insulators today are of porcelain and are made by NGK BAUDOUR. But he did give us a list of the persons in charge of the small local utility companies in surrounding towns under contract to Intercom. Perhaps there we could find some of the older insulators that had been taken down from the lines. 

While in Mechelen, we accepted an invitation to visit Intercom's training school for the linemen. It was time well spent and we learned a lot. One of the instructors there offered Carol a CD 378 EIV power insulator and each of us a CD 685 embossed VERLICA BELGIUM. These were used as teaching aides.

The rest of Monday and Tuesday was devoted to checking out the various electric companies in the towns of Geel, Herentals, Leuven, Aarschot and Heist-op-den-Berg. Almost without exception, the people we met were helpful and generous and we managed to gather up several beautiful specimens of VERLICA BELGIUM glass from their dumpsters as well as a few large French power pieces from their new stock. Very much in evidence, too, were the little No Name U-2210's made by NGK BAUDOUR and used to replace the older glass insulators of equivalent size.

Iveka Intercom's Office at Herentals

By the time we'd said goodbye to our good "B&B" place at Heidehoff and proceeded on to the city of Mons, the trunk of our car was so full of insulators (many of which were cemented to heavy iron brackets) that our suitcases were literally impacted! But we found a good inexpensive hotel there and crashed early. It had been a long two days. 

The next morning we asked the hotel manager if she knew anything about the VERLICA BELGIUM Glass Factory, located in the town of Ghlin, a short distance away from where we were in Mons. She remembered working at the glass factory there a few years back, but it was called VERLIPACK, not VERLICA BELGIUM. Carol and I were soon on our way to Ghlin to see for ourselves. There it was -- VERLIPACK! The factory included several large buildings.

The security gate at Verlipack Glass Factory

At the security gate, we found a woman who had worked there for 20 years. She insisted that VERLIPACK had never produced insulators, even though we showed her some actual specimens, and that their line of products is and has been limited to glass food containers and bottles for beer, wine, soft drinks and medicines. But as we persisted with our questions, she finally put Carol on the phone with Mrs. Emily Calemignn, the Public Relations person at VERLIPACK's main office in Erpe-Mere. She was able to verify the fact that VERLICA BELGIUM was indeed the name of the original factory established at Ghlin in about 1940. In 1970 the name was changed to VERLIPACK. She promised to search through old company records and find answers to other questions if we would put them in writing when we returned to America. I did send her a follow-up letter and enclosed photos of all known CD's of VERLICA BELGIUM insulators. At the time this article needed to be on the editor's desk, I had not received an answer. I sincerely hope that this company kept better records than VEGLA! But at least we learned something!

Before we left Belgium we wanted to see the old Fuisseaux porcelain factory at Baudour, which is now called NGK BAUDOUR S.A. It was just a few miles away from Ghlin and we found it easily. The flags of Belgium and Japan flew proudly side by side in front of the buildings. Fortunately, we were able to speak with the Director and Technical manager of the plant, Mr. Mikio Ishikawa. His name means "stone in the river." He was such a pleasant fellow and so pleased that we were interested in the company that he gladly gave us quite a bit of background information.

Marilyn and Mr. Mikio Ishikawa

The first factory was established in Baudour in 1842 by an engineer named Francois Declercq, who had studied porcelain manufacturing in Saxony, Germany. In 1880, the company was awarded to the Fuisseaux family by the French government for having produced 270,000 porcelain insulators! Insulators were marked simply "Defuisseaux Baudour". There were many different owners of the company between 1880 and 1977 when the French government of this area of Belgium invited NGK to join Baudour. Mr. Ishikawa stressed over and over that NGK had been invited and had not barged in and taken over. He even insisted on taking a picture of Carol and me (borrowing each of our cameras) standing by the two flags so people in America would know that it was friendly merger.

NGK Baudour - the friendly union

The present company logo is an artist's conception of a rocket launching pad representing NGK's efforts to launch new ideas into the world in three areas: Ceramic Ecology, Energy Distribution and Special Chemical Machines to Reduce Garbage.

NGK Baudour's main products today are hollow porcelain shells for gas circuit breakers, instrument transformers, bushings, arresters, condensers, solid core post insulators, railway post insulators and distribution insulators. 

We asked Mr. Ishikawa about the No Name U-2210's that we had seen everywhere and he confirmed the fact that NGK Baudour produced them. They are unmarked because only the larger insulators need to be identified as to what production lot they came from or what date they were made. This is in case there are flaws in the insulators that cause problems, other insulators made in the same production run can be located and replaced. When an insulator manufactured by their plant is marked with the company logo, the letters BB appear in place of NGK. This is for BAUDOUR BELGIUM. 

The U-2210's are all made by hand by one 60-year old man. He works only part time but is the only person who has the knack. They would like to phase him out because their small insulators are a drain on the company's profit. But tradition has it that the Baudour factory has always supplied small insulators to Intercom. However, once the man is retired (or fired) there will be an excuse not to supply them any longer.

"NGK BAUDOUR S.A. Welcomes You." 
Marilyn stands among some of the NGK products manufactured at Baudour.

Because of the length of this article I am going to save France for the next episode. But I did want to give you a sneak preview of one of Carols favorite activities while in France. We thought it was so nice that everywhere we went there was a "basin" provided that was just the right size for soaking insulators!!

Coaxing the pins loose from CD's 459, 460, 571, 578 and 685.

"Stab, twist, poke, grind !"

"Aha! Success!"