Monday, August 30, 2010

Overhead: the easy way

As I did not want to waste my energy putting a lot of effort in soldering together working overhead for a layout on which my only trams with working pantographs will not run properly, I decided to go for dummy catenary poles. To stick with the 'wood' theme on my microlayout (I used it on the platform sides and level crossing) I thought it would be nice to use wooden poles.
The big advantage of not having to pull all overhead wires is that it's done in no-time, while the layout still has the looks of a suburban tram terminus.
Construction was quite simple, for one pole I used a 2mm diameter wooden stick, some 0,5mm brass wire and some pieces of insulation, pulled from thin electric wire. The brass wires were soldered together, the insulation slid onto the ends, and then the whole thing was stuck into small holes I drilled in the poles. A paint job and voilĂ ! I made ten of these in just one afternoon.



I know the placement of the masts is not entirely prototypical, a lot more of them would be needed to keep the wire over the track. On the other side, putting them closer together would also unprototypical...
I hope I found an acceptable compromise here.

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