Insulators Home > Insulator Styles > Porcelain Multiparts > M-2942
Manufacturer: Lapp
Mnfr Code: ?
Date: 1926 - 1927 known
Colors: Brown
Usage: 44 kV - 60 kV
Elton Gish's Multipart Porcelain Insulators book gives dimensions of 10 inches tall, 12 inches top skirt diameter, and 7.5 inches base diameter.
The March 1998 issue of Crown Jewels of the Wire magazine included a photo of an M-2942 made in 1927, in its 'Porcelain Insulator News' section. The caption says "Several were recovered from an old bridge before demolition." An article might have accompanied the photo, but I don't know since the 1998 article archives for CJoW haven't been put online yet (as of July 2004).
It was Pat Scott who retrieved many of them from the Missouri Highway 115 St. Charles Rock Road Bridge. This bridge is thought to be the only installation on which the M-2942 was known to have been used. Read Pat's story, with photos.
According to Pat Scott: At the time of the bridge's demolition, there were around 70 M-2942s on the bridge. The bridge consisted of 4 arched trusses, each of which had 16 towers (arranged in 8 pairs), each of which had 3 pins. (The furthest-west pair was actually a single tower with 6 pins.) Assuming there were Lapps on each pin when the line was originally installed, there were 48 M-2942s per truss, for a total of 192. This means that only about 37% of them were still available when the bridge came down in November-December 1997. Many of the missing ones had been replaced with brown or skytone posts. "Even though the line had no lightning protection, I found no insulators with flashover damage. One problem with these appeared to be stress cracks on the top shell, underneath side, where it was bonded to the bottom shell."
Pat got 1 for free on October 22, 1997, purchased 12 on November 12, and purchased 10 on November 24. He was able to re-sell them for around $100 each; selling 20 through phone-calls, selling 2 on eBay, and giving 1 to a friend. "I wish I had more money to purchase all of them after the demolition. I was a poor college kid. I actually spent every bit of money I had in the bank. By the time I got paid for all these, the job was long over. One M-2942 has shown up since then on eBay; I asked where the seller got it, and it turns out their neighbor was one of the iron workers on the demolition, and he took it home for a souvenir. The foreman told me that some of the men were taking them home, so at least they were saved."
Pat says: "The flood of 1993 ruined a substation in St. Charles, and UE [Union Electric Company - now AmerenUE] reenergized this line as a backup. Apparantly a contractor, also insulator collector, from Kansas City, worked on getting it back into service, and removed some of the units. He took three of them. There were a couple of skytone multiparts up there-- insulators which UE didn't use. I have to wonder if those were his replacements. Anyway, after the flood and the repairs to the sub, the line was taken out of service for good."
Since so many were taken home by non-collectors during the demolition, and others might have been kept during previous maintenance also, nobody can be sure just how many of the original 192 are still around. Currently known to collectors, there are at least 2 with the 1926-code '(LI)' incuse mark (via Pat), and at least 25 with the '(LI) LAPP 1927' inkstamp mark (21 via Pat, 1 via the ironworker, and 3 via the contractor from KC).
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper published an article about the history of the bridge, on July 7, 2004. The Old St. Charles Bridge was 2873 feet long, spanning the Missouri River to connect St. Charles County with St. Louis County. It first opened to traffic on Sunday May 22, 1904, but wasn't completely finished until June 23, 1904. On January 16, 1932, the bridge became part of US Hwy 40. By 1990, it had developed such structural problems that it had to be examined weekly. According to St. Louis Highways, the old MO 115 bridge was closed to traffic on January 1, 1993 after the replacement bridge opened. On April 1, 1993, the MO 115 highway was re-numbered to MO 370.
The St. Charles County Library District's Digital Postcard Collection - Bridges and Transportation includes scans of several vintage postcards with photos of and information about the Old St. Charles Bridge (as well as some of the Wabash Railroad Bridge).
The Library of Congress's Historical American Engineering Record includes a document with great detail on the bridge's history, entitled "Old St. Charles Bridge (Old Route 40 Bridge) - HAER No. MO-30". This information was collected by David B. Crampton of the Missouri Highway and Transportation Department, in 1989. Scans of its 40 text, map, and photo pages, as well as 22 additional photos of the bridge, are available at the LoC's site. I have converted the 40 scanned page images into a searchable PDF file (2.07 MB).
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Contact: A.C. Walker
