In my early days of law enforcement I was often sent out to 'walk the beat', being the junior man on my platoon. This privilege usually occurred on nights when Toronto received 3" of pouring rain, or when the thermometer dropped below -20 Celsius. How I cursed my beloved patrol sergeant in those days! 

I recently bumped into my old supervisor who, while still in law enforcement, also runs a wrecking company on the side. Low and behold, he had just completed wrecking out 57 miles of telegraph line.

"What did you do with all of the insulators?" I asked.
"Those glass things?" came the typical response. 
"Yes, where are they?" 
"Well, the poles are sold and I'm salvaging all of the metal. But the glass is just sitting up on my farm."

Minutes later I had directions to his farm. Unfortunately the tail-end of Hurricane Andrew came through Ontario and all thoughts of hiking were curtailed. However, five days later I set out for the farm with Tom Iannelli and Bruce Templeton.

Lets see, 57 miles of line, with 50 poles per mile, and three crossarms per pole, and 8 insulators per crossarm... that's 68,400 insulators. 

We arrived at the farm and were disappointed to find that our calculations were somewhat in error. I doubt that there were more than 50,000 insulators, give or take a dozen. Surprisingly, some 95% had survived the wrecking and hauling process. 

At first glance it appeared to be nothing but Continental rubber style replacements and Dominion-42's. But closer examination of the mountains of cross-arms revealed many goodies hiding deep inside the piles. 

For the duration of the day we did our "three kids in a candy store" routine and found a variety of CD 145 (steel-grey GTP's), several varieties of CD 143's (whittle molds, CPR's), and a good number of CD 154 CNR blot-outs in light pink. And most bizarre for southern Ontario, a simple Dominion-42 wearing a steel skirt. All in all, a great day aside from the glass cuts and wasp-stings! 

Not an outstanding haul, but it made up for some of those' midnight shifts' when I walked 'the beat' all night long without seeing another human being (every sane citizen was in bed) !

Tom Iannelli and John Badowski on top of one of many of the piles.

John perusing one of the piles.