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Catenary

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As most of you probably know by now, one of my pet dislikes is that all these trains run around with pantographs on top seemingly drawing electricity from thin air. Whilst that might be really wonderful if they could do that we all know that in real life that does not happen. (Yet!)

So with the advent of the Horizon Express I decided to bite the bullet and make some. Now they are nothing fancy, I have had a look at what others have done and come up with a really basic design that is simple to make yet seems to look vaguely like the real thing, at least enough like them to satisfy a LEGO railway.

The ones I have made are for a twin track although obviously they would be simply modded for single lines and probably will be. I only have five so far as that was all the bits I had but anyway here they are. Like I said nothing fancy.

One thing I would like to have your opinions on, for those who have catenary already, how far apart from each other should they be on average? On the section of track on my work bench I have only spaced them every five or six sleepers which is probably way to close to each other, what do you think, one every two track lengths?

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Actually neither do I thinking about it. I built them just after I finished building the forest police helicopter so I think I had port and starboard going around in my head! But you are right I may have to change that and remove them. I think my idea was partly to make sure they were all the same way round if I put them on a double track, but that was before the design was finalised so as to speak and as they are the same on both sides it is somewhat redundant. I'll take them off right away.

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Catenary we use on exhibitons:

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/AshiValkoinen/OtherLEGO/HUNLTCpics/img_0750.jpg

We set up them close to each other above curves and switches (1 pole/one and half, two train track segments), but not so close above straight (1 pole/4-5 track segments).

In reality in Hungary poles are set up 75 metres fr from each other, in our scale (~1:42) it would mean 1 pole/13-14 track segments.

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Nice. Instead of the trans red/green 1x1 round plates, I would have put plain transparent ones. As for spacing I think that one every track section is more than enough. On straight runs one could go to one every other section...

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A fascinating subject :) There is a lot of work going on here in New Zealand with overhead electrification at the moment which makes me keen to try some catenary of my own.

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With the placement of Catenary Masts think of where the actual wires would be placed over the track if you did have them in place, I normally have a mast placed at every second length of track on a curved section and on straight section I have them placed at 5 lengths of track apart, that placement in many respects mimics what I have seen in real life as the masts are about 2 to 3 coach lengths apart on straight sections of track. Having them grouped any tighter makes it look overly cluttered especially when you are doing an area with a lot of curves in it as shown in the first 2 photos, I had placed the masts at the distances I had mentioned before and as you can see it's already a forest of catenary masts any closer and you would not be able to see anything else but catenaery masts. The bottom photo is of an older exhibition layout and gives you a good idea on what a more rural section of railway line looks like with masts spread out over a reasonable distance and does not look cluttered compared to the scenes around the locomotive depot.

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Edited by Steinkopf

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This is something that's been on my own mind lately, as I start thinking about a layout I'd like to do. I've been thinking about trying to go the whole nine yards and including not just the towers but the actual lines, using LEGO strings. I'm sure I can't be the first person to have given this some thought, and indeed people must have tried it or done it numerous times before. Has anyone here? Are there concerns to be aware of?

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This is something that's been on my own mind lately, as I start thinking about a layout I'd like to do. I've been thinking about trying to go the whole nine yards and including not just the towers but the actual lines, using LEGO strings. I'm sure I can't be the first person to have given this some thought, and indeed people must have tried it or done it numerous times before. Has anyone here? Are there concerns to be aware of?

With the overhead wiring I decided not to add it to my catenary masts for a number of reasons, the main one being that it is extremely hard to replicate the look of the whole construction accurately which includes the catenary wire, contact wire, droppers and feeders, also in real life you don't really notice the wiring at a distance. Another issue is the structural integrity of such a system the masts need to be strong enough to be able to support the catenary wiring, the biggest problem is if one mast was to be knocked down by a derailed train or a clumsy club member you would end up with the rest of the catenary being knocked down by a Domino Effect.

Edited by Steinkopf

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With the overhead wiring I decided not to add it to my catenary masts for a number of reasons, the main one being that it is extremely hard to replicate the look of the whole construction accurately which includes the catenary wire, contact wire, droppers and feeders, also in real life you don't really notice the wiring at a distance. Another issue is the structural integrity of such a system the masts need to be strong enough to be able to support the catenary wiring, the biggest problem is if one mast was to be knocked down by a derailed train or a clumsy club member you would end up with the rest of the catenary being knocked down by a Domino Effect.

The latter is a particularly good point, though of course the risk would be mitigated by not putting the setup on display in some public venue.

I'm going to have to think about replicating the look, though...

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I did consider the wires once before. When I had a N Gauge layout years ago we had the catenary for this as it mostly had German locomotives which had pantographs and for the same reason I wanted to include them. I did see in some of the magazines that were around about actually powering your locomotives from the wires as they had pick up built into the pantographs. My father and I bought some intending to try it out. We set about setting it up but after a long weekend of frustration and irritability gave it up as a bad job. It seemed to be excessively difficult and just not worth the hassle. So in the end we just used the masts.

Now LEGO is obviously a much bigger scale but I expect that as Steinkopf said it would just be a problem with the strength of masts and so on. I guess if you were to try it then it would be a case of actually glueing the bricks that made up the masts to give them added strength and whilst I may end up doing that anyway I am not quite there yet. Another thing I found on my old n Gauge layout was even having the masts there it was really hard not to knock them over every time you had to put an engine or rolling stock onto the track. Something else that would be easier with LEGO but probably done more often due to the speed that people run the trains at and the inherent nature of LEGO Trains to fly off in corners when running at those speeds.

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Now LEGO is obviously a much bigger scale but I expect that as Steinkopf said it would just be a problem with the strength of masts and so on. I guess if you were to try it then it would be a case of actually glueing the bricks that made up the masts to give them added strength and whilst I may end up doing that anyway I am not quite there yet. Another thing I found on my old n Gauge layout was even having the masts there it was really hard not to knock them over every time you had to put an engine or rolling stock onto the track. Something else that would be easier with LEGO but probably done more often due to the speed that people run the trains at and the inherent nature of LEGO Trains to fly off in corners when running at those speeds.

Your last sentence here is interesting to me, as aside from the additional realism, one reason I'd thought of going all the way with the 'wires' would be to somehow use them to keep a fast train from flying off. I'd had this idea that maybe the pantograph could have some small projections on it that would stand up on either side of the wire, letting the wire serve as a sort of aerial guardrail that might help keep the train from tipping over and derailing when going around curves at high speeds. Of course, while this might not be feasible to begin with, any chance of it working would depend upon strengthening the towers enough so that they don't get pushed over themselves (I personally won't be gluing anything or otherwise modifying bricks, so I'd have to find something reliant entirely upon standard LEGO construction techniques)...

(And obviously it wouldn't do anything to keep my minifigures from getting motion sickness with the sudden sideways g-forces, but there's only so much one can do about that. :wink: It's just the price they have to pay for riding a rail system with curves with such a short radius.)

Edited by Blondie-Wan

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The thing with using pantographs to hold onto catenary wires is that curves become tricky: they are a succession of straight lines. What I mean is that one will have to take into account the fact that the catenary wire goes straight from pole to pole and that with the LEGO curves the distance between the wire and the centre of the curve will be quite important.

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OK, I have had a bit of a redesign and have uploaded pictures to the original flickr album in my first post. These new ones are for a single line and I am working on needing between 30 to 40 of them for a single line in the areas where it will be seen? I have a Bricklink order placed for the bits I need. I have replaced the green and red round 1X1 plates with LBG ones, I think that looks a lot better and more like the photos I have looked at.

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I have consulted with an Overhead Line engineer from Network Rail (My wife sitting on the sofa opposite me) and she informs me that looking at the type of structures you have built that they would be about 35m apart. There are obviously lots of things that effect it depending on the type of structure and type of wires you are running.

So to me sounds like put them where ever you like.

D

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Thanks everyone, I am going to with every four or five straight lengths when I set it up and see how that looks, on the bends I'll do whatever means the wires would not overhang off the track so I will try this by trial and error. As I said down in the south west of the UK we do not seem to have any of these overhead power lines for me to look at so I am replying on photos. We tend to have a third rail running alongside the normal ones and the trains pick up power from those as they go along.

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