Collecting Railroad Insulators

How Did I Obtain My Insulators?

During the 1990's, I decided to walk along the railroad track to look for antique glass insulators. Now as anyone knows, along a railroad track there are poles, and there are a number of glass insulators atop of those poles. These belong to the railroad and you could get into a whole lot of trouble if you attempted to acquire some of the mounted insulators for yourself! The good news for collectors is that after a period of time, the crossbars atop many of the poles are removed and tossed to the ground, complete with the used insulators. No one misses these used insulators. And so I looked for crossbeams, and if I found any insulators that were not chipped, cracked, or otherwise ruined, I would keep them. I thus developed a small collection of some a few dozen insulators.

Who Were Some of the Makers of Insulators?

What are some of the manufacturers' names on my insulators? Most of mine are either Brookfield, Hemingray, Whitall Tatum, Armstrong (formerly Whitall Tatum), or Western Union Telegraph Company. Many of them are various shades of green glass, a few are a shade of aqua, and some are clear glass. The Western Union Telegraph Company insulators are black rubber from the Continental Rubber Company, and of course these are not nearly so popular to collect.

Why Are They Usually Inexpensive to Collect?

Most insulators, including mine, are not of tremendous value, or at least you can't sell them for much. Perhaps it is because many people collect them, and a lot have survived. Or perhaps it is because it isn't exactly an everyday item such as sterling silver spoons or salt cellars that housewives might enjoy collecting. At any rate, they do have a kind of value for crafts-people. I have seen a number of them used in making lamps.

Some of the insulators are really quite beautiful. Even among my simple ones, there is the beauty of curvature, of the quality of the glass, and even a beaded skirt along the bottom of some of them. Colors can be either subtle or quite vibrant. A number of them have fairly old patent dates. One of mine lists its patent date as 1865 - another as 1885.

The High End of Collecting

Now there are some very valuable railroad insulators. One Whitall Tatum insulator is valued at between $7,500.00 and $10,000.00. One Buzby, named for Joseph F. Buzby of Pennsylvania, is worth more than $20,000.00.

Yes, insulators can be cheap to collect, but one can shoot for the moon if they desire to, spending even tens of thousands of dollars on just one. At the same time, to collect railroad insulators is to collect a bit of "Americana" that may soon disappear in its entirety from the realm of the affordable.