While planning travel to Moab, Utah to work on the movie, City Slickers 2 (released in 1994), I called Jack Riesselman to ask if he knew of any good insulators from the area. He said he knew of scarce 126’s coming out of the area south of Salt Lake City.
I started peppering the area newspapers heavily with advertisements to buy insulators and got several responses With my hopes up I started calling the respondents back. As usual there were plenty of Hemingray 42’s and other various junk, but one lady stated that her old covered wagon had insulators turning purple laying in the sun. Upon my arrival I found it was just clear 42s. With this being my last lead my heart sunk.
“Don’t worry “ she said “I know this old cafe where all the railroad guys go.” I thought at this early part of my investigation that the 126s were from a
railroad....makes perfect sense. We arrived to an empty cafe with the exception of an old gentleman and a young boy. She told me the man worked in the telephone company years ago, so I approached him. When I drew him a CD 126 outline and he said “Nine Mile Line! “ I asked what that meant and he gave me the actual history of the old fort line. But here’s the clincher. It seems that about the time the fort was abandoned, the new Mountain States Tel & Tel Co rebuilt and updated the decrepit line and they went to WGM Co for the “new” insulators. It was converted to a magneto telephone circuit which only needed one wire. That is the reason all the very old and regular old insulators were still being used up to 1965 with the iron poles.
NOW the man really had my attention. So we went to his shed/work shop where 20 or 30 121 WGMs were on a shelf. I said that they were nice but not the older ones. He said to come to another spot in his workshop and he pulled out a box and began unwrapping the old phone company cleaning cloths was aqua and I said it’s nice, then out came a strong limey olive, and I said now were talking.
December 2018 27
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