| This is at the crossing of the PA turnpike in October 1999. We had seen this line in the past, and ALL the insulators were glass! Twelve PROVOs on one set of poles. Very impressive! You will also notice that the bottom insulator "popped" its top -- this is a good reason why they have double crossarms at the road crossings! |
| Here you can see the line going up a hill on the other side of the Turnpike. Sorry for the poor photo... The first pole has six insulators with a double crossarm (12 total), and the second pole just six insulators on a single cross arm. |
| This is more typical of the line, out in the field. Now, many of the insulators are changed out, and being replaced with porcelain. You may have seen some of these at shows or on eBay. |
| In 1999, with the help of our laptop and GPS mapping software, we were able to
plot this course of the PROVO line. Further north is Exit 7, and if you get off on
the back roads and head SE, with a little luck you can get back to point #0 where
they cross the PA Turnpike. This is exactly at mile marker 72 and the marker is in the median. You can see Exit 8 in the lower center by New
Stanton. If you look up, its hard to miss the line passing over the road, as that
green platina on six copper wires really shows up! Compared to the dull aluminum
wire in use in most other areas.
With the help of a street level detail map and the GPS we were able to criss cross the line, or "guess" where the next access point might be. To the NW, we were not able to pick up the line again, nor to the SE. We did find power lines, but they did not have the cross wire that was characteristic on this stretch of the line, nor did we see any glass insulators. At #2 there is a pole right in the middle of someone's turn around in front of their house. How would you have to have six nice aqua glass PROVO's in your driveway! Down at the end of this map, at point #8 you also see the PROVOs just running down the side of a regular street, on the utility poles with all the standard pole, cable, etc. wires. The top run of power is glass PROVOs!! This is on Hillis St, Youngwood, PA. See this street view November 2020 on Google Maps. I understand there used to be two 30 mile lines that ran around this area, each carrying 66KV (above the rating for the 0 PROVOs!! Just goes to show how good those Hemingray's were!!). Now, at least one set of phases is carrying a much lover voltage, as some of the insulators swapped out have been replaced with small porcelain insulators, no larger than a CD 252 No 2 cable. We have stopped at this line probably three times in our journeys west, and it always is a thrill to see it! |
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Updated Friday, September 6, 2002; Thurday, July 8, 2021