Help with Choosing A Catenary System

[robert.]

I had a few how to articles saved.This is the only one i could fine and it's ho. With a little math you could change it . I articles was easy to read and helpful. i lost it. Rufus liked it when i posted it. maybe he saved it. anywho here is the HO one.
http://pennsyrr.com/kc/model/downloads/catenary.pdf

[R.K. Maroon]

I am reluctant to thread drift here, as Jon and Pete's conversation is of interest. But, to answer Carey's question, I have never heard of or, as far as I know, seen anything by Druck. However, these came in just this week, donated by a good friend in support of the club's traction layout efforts:

Antique Traction Line Poles.JPG (69.59 KiB) Viewed 7153 times

All steel. We plan to use them.

[2railjon]

robert, that is a great article even if it’s HO!
Thank you!

RK! Those look dang fine!! Hmm... let me check on MIG welder prices as you never know when you need to whip up a few more cat poles or repair an Abrams tank during the apocalypse!

[J. S. Bach]

However, these came in just this week, donated by a good friend in support of the club's traction layout efforts. All steel. We plan to use them.

Made by International Models, I have several loose ones and (somewhere) a box of them. The ones that I have are brass, not steel. Not shown in your photo is the rectangular base that the pole is soldered(?) into; it has two mounting holes, one near each end on the long axis.

[2railjon]

Well, the 2 track poles look mighty fine!!! I wasn’t sure if the closeness of my curves would allow me to put a pole between the two tracks. But I’m thinking it will be possible!

[PRR Man]

you may know we have extensive catenary on the Cherry Valley club layout, all hand made.

if you wind up purchasing lineside poles, building the wires is not all that difficult if you're handy with a soldering iron.

Drew McCann, who built our catenary, made a jig to fabricate a string of catenary. it was comprised of a 1x piece of wood with the string detail draw out, then 'jigged' with nail brads to hold all the myriad wire pieces in place while soldering.
he used phosphor-bronze piano wire. if you have access to resistance soldering that's even better, as each solder joint is localized heat.
curves are more complicated as the wire requires additional pull-off poles to make the curve.

if you look online, there a several videos of the club layout available to see the catenary.

[E7]

you may know we have extensive catenary on the Cherry Valley club layout, all hand made.

if you look online, there a several videos of the club layout available to see the catenary.

Chris,

Since the club's catenary has been up and running for a considerable time at this point, can you (or anyone there) comment on wear and tear of components. Is it an ongoing maintenance program, or just fix this or that now and again?

Any ideas if it would be feasible to string non-functional catenary to fool the eye and run the locos from track current as it's already there. Was that idea ever considered? Seems to me the illusion would be just as good as the real thing if it could be done convincingly.

Rich

[2railjon]

Hi Chris! I really appreciate you adding your expertise to this thread!!! I’m pretty good with a soldering iron (retired avionics tech) but I need to replace my burned out resistance soldering set.
Before I decide on which poles to go with I need to get this CUT P1 running to measure the pantograph height. So here seems a bit of an issue!


And the culprit appears!!
The solder joint on this plate bushing obviously failed.

[webenda]

The solder joint on this plate bushing obviously failed.

The person who did the work failed. He failed to get the solder to flow into the joint.
I would clamp the plates to the rails and use a torch to get the plate hot enough to flow the solder.

[2railjon]

Hi Wayne! I’d have to go all the way to China to slap the guy that did that!
It’s repaired and I should have reassembled tomorrow!

[PRR Man]

since the club's catenary is not complete around the layout, it is not used running trains. in fact one location uses small HO 'cheater rail' as the running wire to test its function. that said, it all has held up very well in it's static state. of course we've boxed ourselves in trying to reach any derailed equipment through the catenary. not easy!

all our lineside poles are built up from brass H shapes. when our supply source disappeared we had the shape milled from bar stock.

Jon, the expertise is not mine, but Drew's. I happen to be on hand during the process.

a fellow named John Sethian in Virgina (or Maryland) has an O scale layout complete with all the catenary poles, etc. but no wire strung. it's pretty realistic. I think there are also videos online of his layout.

[2railjon]

Hi Chris! Yes John Sethian is an awesome O Scale modeler!
I’ll check his site out!

Ok, the P1 hit the tracks! The pantographs fully extended are 6”.


Close enough to the GG1’s

[2railjon]

So.... back to the resurrection of the P1.

It ran intermittently on the loop shorting out in curves. So I picked the engine up reversed it’s direction and it ran fine.

My guess that a pilot truck was the problem proved to be correct.
The bushing that holds one of the pilot trucks was the case of another poor Asian soldering job.

[rogruth]

Jon,
You got a couple of locos with great magni-traction there.

[2railjon]

LOL, Roger!! Wasn’t magni-traction something Lionel used to advertise?