How to Electrify a railroad

[Green_Elite_Cab]

Well, i started building a new jig today. In the past, i just had some brads lined up that only lined up some corners. , but i tried to improve upon that. now i'm using track nails, but these are aligned so that they will hold various sizes of the brass H-column stock. the one length of nails will hold the H-5 (the vertical columns of the PRR catenary tower), and others oriented at right angles will hold either the H-3 or the H-4 crossbeam sizes (H-5 crossbeams match up, so i don't think i'll need to make a separat jig for that.).

the only two things i need to work on is determing my sag brace requirements, so i can make an additional jig section for them. the sag brace might be a different angles depending on the width of the structure (which will vary between 2-4 tracks). I have yet to determine what these actually are. I would say that the distance on the vertical pole from the sag brace to the crossbeam is the same, but i might be wrong, and i don't feel good eye-balling it. I'll have to study more photos.

I will also need to come up with shims to prop the pieces up so they are centered on the Vertical H Columns. I found a good one for the H-3(3/32), but i need to get some that will hold the sag brace (1/16") and the H-4 (1/8") centered with the H-5 (5/32"), as well as the small verticle "T" sections (3/64") that connect the sag brace to the horizontal crosspan halfway from the center. These i think will be about the same size, and I'll probably make just one "sag brace" jig that has staggered track nails with the same shim, allowing me to do all the sag braces in one spot.

Here is a Photo of the jig.



This plastic sheet seesm to be thick enough to hold the H-3 even with the H-5 center.





I also took a page from Bill Kachel in my Wire jig. He sues a far simpler route than Andy rubbo's suggested method of making catneary wire (which requires you to know the distances between poles and build the messenger wire with teh rest of it). It is essentially a scrap board laeft over from my layout's benchwork (never waste anything!) with straigh pins aligned so that it holds two wirs at a unifrom distance. One only needs to go down the line and solder between the two. later on, you can file this down (or you can use small bits of wire to ensure the solder stays uniform).

You can actually see Bill kachel's layout over at this thread- <!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.the-gauge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2110">viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2110</a><!-- l -->

Bill Kachel also released an article online in PDF form on how he built his catneary, but it is a bit dated, and doesn't necessarily give you a protoypical system, and many of the suggested wire connections are not entirely correct. Also, some construction techniques are in my opinion, easiuer done on the work bench than in the air. <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://kc.pennsyrr.com/model/downloads/catenary.pdf">http://kc.pennsyrr.com/model/downloads/catenary.pdf</a><!-- m -->

Here is my jig, which is essential the same one as detailed in the PDF above.



You can see that it has already been scorched from use. I might add additional pins to do the curvesd messenger wire, but i am not entirely confident in my catenary span placement just yet, so i want to figure that out before i commit to any jig. for now, the trolley and auxiliary wires will be fine, as the messenger can be added later.



One of the issues of building catenary is space requirements. While some people mays say, "its your railroad, run whatever space you want!", I find that there is often a legitmate reason for different distance requirements. One is the distance between the center line of the track and the catenary pole. that should be between 12 to 15 feet. While i have seen exceptions (tracks at the strasburg railroad appear to cut it close to the catenary poles), this seems to clsoe.



as a result, i've actually removed the track with the Pan AM boxcar, i've deemed it unecsessary. It would have been possible for me to build a single pole catenary structure (in fact, i did in the mockups) that spanned the two tracks, such a structure would break the uniformity of the catenary, and it might have a tendancy to "swivel", which is not good for keeping the tension going. (note i painted one of my E44s conrail blue. gotta add decals sometime this week).



thats it for now, hopefully i can get back and update this thread with some real progress.