Collecting Early Line Equipment has Become a Passion for Jim Binkley, Robert Padgett, George Hayden, Jason Townsend, Andy Price and Chris Hedges. The artifacts they collect speak to an early way of working the lines that might have been lost to the present generation if not for collectors like them.

“I started collecting when I found a piece of a Mickey Mouse insulator from the early 1900s on a railroad track,” said Jim Binkley, a line superintendent in Scottsburg, Indiana. “An older lineman said that if I could find a complete insulator, it might be worth something. Well, that made me curious.”

Robert Padgett, a lineman with Lakeland Electric (Lakeland, Florida), has always had an interest in history. “I live in a log cabin filled with antiques,” Padgett said. “I love to learn how they built houses in the 1800s and how they built the early power lines.”

George Hayden, who worked for several municipal utilities in Indiana and is now retired, came across interesting old equipment in his work that other people had thrown away.

Jason Townsend, a lineman for M.J. Electric (Iron Mountain, Michigan), got his start in collecting by traveling with his job.

Likewise, Andy Price has traveled as a salesman for American Safety Utility Corp. (Shelby, North Carolina). “I saw old photos of linemen at work and wondered what happened to that old equipment,” Price said. “As I started collecting, my initial goal was to put together a display case in my office but word spread about my collection. Soon, I had an abundance of items, so I eventually started the International Linemen's Museum.”

Chris Hedges, an electrical contractor, began collecting when he was a little boy visiting his uncle's Ozark, Missouri, farm. Initially, Hedges collected old telephone line insulators when a phone line near the farm was being upgraded. Crews left the old poles and equipment for the local farmers to scavenge.

“Then the local utility built a transmission line across the farm,” Hedges said. “The crews let me ride around the property with them. They showed me the different types of insulators and got me interested.”

THE MESSAGE IS NOT LOST

Hayden collects in part to honor the early linemen, many who lost their lives on the job in the industry's early years. To ensure that message is not lost, Hayden takes his collection on the road, making presentations and attending meetings where industry people gather.

“The line crews today often don't get to experience their history,” Hayden said. “The guys who see the old equipment realize how primitive and dangerous it was to operate.”

Binkley added, “Seeing the early equipment helps the younger guys respect the industry and understand how it was built.”

Old photographs particularly illustrate how the linemen worked years ago. “There was a time before two-way radio communication when the linemen either had to stop at a farmhouse to call the office, or climb a pole and clip the phone line to make a call,” Hayden said.

Preserving the artifacts also documents the unique bond of linemen. “When linemen come into the Linemen's Museum, it doesn't matter if they are from Alaska or Louisiana, they are the same at their core,” Price said. “It is a brotherhood and they are passionate about what they do. It is rewarding when someone brings in a father or grandfather who was a linemen and hearing them tell stories of their work.”

Hedges said that saving relics from the industry's early days was important in documenting an industry that shaped our country's economy. “The power industry at the turn of the century is similar to what the computer industry is to us,” Hedges said. Electricity brought tremendous efficiencies and revolutionized our country, just as the digital age is doing now.”

EACH COLLECTOR'S SPECIALTY

Although the collectors rarely pass up an interesting relic, they each have a special fondness for a particular type of item. “I love old tools,” Padgett said. “A man made a living with a tool and took care of it. It kept him alive and made him a good paycheck. I often come across old pieces and think, ‘If this tool could talk, the stories it could tell.’

“Back in the day, before bucket trucks, a lineman had to climb all day and relied on his tools,” Padgett said. “An old wrench that a guy used on a pole before they had hydraulic wrenches, that's what interests me. I collect hot sticks that were from 6-feet to 16-feet long and were just an extension of a man's hand. The early hot sticks were wood and very heavy. They had to hoist transformers up on a pole by hand and had several tools to do that.

“When people look at old photographs, they are amazed to see the way linemen worked on the lines without bucket trucks,” Padgett said. “Linemen were really tough back in the day.”

Padgett is interested in the way tools have evolved over the years, as manufacturers tweaked the equipment to make it more effective based on linemen's experiences.

Binkley enjoys collecting transmission equipment. These pieces can be difficult to find because transmission lines — the backbone of the power systems — are upgraded often, and the old equipment is usually discarded. What equipment he does find during construction projects, he hauls home. Eventually, he assembled a transmission tower in his backyard as a monument to his collecting.

Townsend collects hot sticks manufactured in the early teens through the 1950s. “I get most of my stuff from linemen who are getting ready to retire,” he said. “My most prized piece is a 1939 Bubble Fender hot stick trailer in canary yellow. A little municipality in southern Illinois gave it to me.”

Because of his passion for collecting insulators, Hedges has become an authority on the subject. The telephone and telegraph industry used glass insulators, so when the power industry developed years later, it initially used the same glass insulators used by telegraph companies.

“Then as the need developed, insulator companies worked with the power companies to design insulators that had larger conductor capacity and could take a higher voltage,” Hedges said. “Glass has to be formed in a metal mold, so there were physical limitations on how large the glass insulators could be. Porcelain has a higher mechanical strength than glass and can more easily be shaped into large products, so it replaced glass as the insulator material.”

When porcelain was introduced, the porcelain pieces had to be welded together. Sometimes they would shatter in extreme temperatures. “I saw an example of this in 1987 while driving near the Ozarks,” Hedges said. “The temperature was 40 degrees below zero, the coldest recorded temperature in central Missouri in 60 years. I was driving near a line that had been built in the late 1930s, so it hadn't been that cold since the line was built. As I was driving, the sun was shining, warming the tops of these multipart insulators, causing them to shatter. The bottoms of some of the insulators were still on the pin and the conductors were floating. I watched as one of them shattered in the cold.

“Insulators are just a cog in the wheel of power equipment, but without them, the wheel wouldn't turn,” Hedges said.

ODD AND INTERESTING PIECES

Though Padgett is a tool collector, he found an unusually large 14-inch-diameter insulator from the 1920s on a lady's front porch. “She had it turned upside down and had flowers planted in it,” Padgett said. “She didn't know what it was and just thought it made a good planter.”

Padgett also has wire grips manufactured by Western Electric in 1910. He found a wooden hot stick made prior to 1929.

Townsend has what he believes is the oldest-known existing hot stick. “I got it for free, but then spent $1,200 getting it restored,” he said. “I also have some old pay meters. You used to pay for your electricity by putting coins in the meter outside your house.”

His most recent addition to his collection is a 10-foot-long sign that reads: I work for Reddy Kilowatt for Just Pennies a Day.

He also receives an odd assortment of items from retirees and donates some to the Linemen's Museum.

Binkley's most unique piece is actually an item he created himself. The American Public Power Association was hosting a linemen's rodeo in his home state of Indiana. He created a keepsake for each utility team using two crossarm braces bolted together with a Mickey Mouse insulator as a centerpiece. He used wire in various sizes to represent the year: two, zero, zero and eight. Even the dimensions of the keepsake, which are 4 inches by 19 inches by 8 inches, represent the date of the event. In keeping with the western theme of the rodeo, he took a brand and made a silhouette of linemen's hooks. The event was held at the Indianapolis Speedway, so he attached an Indiana quarter, which features an outline of the state with an Indy car, to the keepsake.

“When I presented the keepsakes to the teams at the awards dinner, I got a standing ovation,” Binkley said. “I think that was the high point of my utility career. The event organizers from the previous year said they were glad their event was the year before mine because that would have been a hard act to follow.”

Hedges' collection includes glass insulators from 1891 used in the Telluride experiments conducted by George Westinghouse. For the experiment, researchers ran a three-phase line up over a mountaintop and down the other side. They connected the two test sites with telephone wire. They used a hydro generator and varied the voltage. The line had crossarms, each with three different types of insulators. Telluride experienced a lot of lightning strikes and precipitation, so it was the perfect site to test insulator performance.

Hayden's favorite pieces in his collection are related to the Hoover Dam. He has an H&H hollow conductor installed at the dam during its construction in the 1930s, plus two deadend shoes and an in-line splice. He also has the complete specifications for materials used in the construction of the transmission line from Los Angeles to Hoover Dam.

Some of Hayden's other interesting pieces are house meters with 136 cycles on their nameplates, though the cycles in the U.S. power industry have been 60 cycles for years. “I took my collection to a utility company meeting and asked the men about the cycles,” Hayden said. “This young guy said he could solve the puzzle. He had worked for a northern Indiana utility that had a letter from Thomas Edison written to various people. In the letter, he thanked them for attending a meeting where they had decided to use 60 cycles across the U.S. so that the transmission grid could tie together all the utilities.”

The collection in the Linemen's Museum, which Price manages, includes tools, meters and vehicles from the late 1880s. The vehicles include a 1918 all-electric car, a 1926 white line truck, a 1935 Chevrolet service truck, a 1945 Studebaker line truck, a 1957 GMC line truck donated by the city of Larned, Kansas, and three hot stick trailers. Also housed in the museum are the original patented linemen's rubber gloves from the 1940s, a 1901 coin-operated meter and an 1888 Westinghouse meter.

THE THRILL OF THE HUNT

Early linemen's tools are hard to find, Padgett said, because when power companies buy new tools they usually destroy the old ones. Then the old tools won't cause injury if they fall into untrained hands. He estimates that only a small percentage of these relics survive. Still, Padgett manages to find the illusive pieces.

“When I go on vacation, I pull into the local power company, explain that I'm a collector and ask to go through their dumpster,” he said. “Then when I return home, I'll call some retired linemen to get some background on the piece and how it was used.”

Binkley enjoys traveling to other utilities to lend assistance after a storm. He uses those trips to scout out what artifacts are available in other parts of the country. “When I go to another utility, I always find someone there who collects stuff,” he said. “So before I leave, I throw a few Mickey Mouse insulators in the truck and use them to trade for what I want. I have insulators and arm pins from the 1890s that I got trading with other collectors.”

Hedges has found some of his collection online. “eBay and the online auctions have been a boon to collecting,” Hedges said. “It has driven up the prices but has also shaken the closets. There has been a lot of stuff that has shown up on eBay that would have been tossed otherwise.”

“There would be so much history lost if there weren't collectors,” said Padgett. “We need to remember where we came from as linemen and these artifacts help us remember.”