High-voltage lines require long pins to hold the lower edges of insulators well above the cross-arms, and these pins must be much stronger than those used on ordinary lines, because of the increased leverage of each wire.
A pin twelve inches long over all and having a diameter of one and one-half inches in the part that enters the cross-arm has been much used for transmission circuits, but is much too short and weak for high voltages. On the 50,000-volt line between Cañon Ferry and Butte the pins are seasoned oak boiled in paraffin. Each of these pins is seventeen and one-half inches long, two and one-half inches in diameter for a length of four and one-half inches in the middle part, two inches in diameter for a length of five and one-half inches that fits into the cross-arm or pole top, and one and one-half inches in diameter at the top of the thread inside of the insulator. These pins hold the outside edges of the insulators nine inches above the tops of cross-arms. Each of these pins is held in its socket by a three-eighths-inch bolt that passes entirely through the pin and the cross-arm or pole top.
On the line between Electra and San Francisco the pins are each sixteen and seven-eighths inches long, two and three-quarters inches in diameter at the largest central part, and two and one-quarter inches in diameter in the lower part, five inches long, that fits into the cross-arm or pole top. One of these pins broke at the shoulder with a pull of 2,200 pounds at the threaded part. Carriage bolts one-half inch in diameter pass through the cross-arm and pin two inches from the top of the arm, and one bolt three inches from the pin on each side. Without these bolts the arms split on test with a pull of 1,200 pounds on the pin, but with the bolts the pin broke as above.
The entrance of transmission lines into generating plants and sub-stations presents special problems in construction and insulation. One of these problems has to do with the mechanical security of each conductor at the point where it passes through the side or roof of the station. Conductors are sometimes attached to the station so that the strain of the line is borne by the side wall where they enter and tends to pull it out of line.