telephone pole spacing for HO

[dlgillen]

Can someone tell me the proper distance to space telephone poles on an HO scale layout.
Thanks
Dan

[Big_Boy_4005]

Pole spacing on the prototype is about 100' on level ground. About 14" in HO would look good.

[rogerhensley]

I have gathered this from several sources over the years, and personally recommend ;ess than 100 feet btween poles on an HO layout unless it is a very big layout..

***
Bell Telephone Common Practices

City poles telephone:
75 ft on street 40' poles 6' in ground. Tel cable 18' off ground additional
40 inch minimum clearance to electric lines.

Rear yards: 30ft light duty poles. Usually every other yard. Cable height
varies 12-18ft depending on power share requirements.

Rural: 75-100 feet. Tel cable 18' off ground 40" clearance to electric
lines.

Poles by the Track
There are 40 poles to the mile. Each 4 poles is a tenth. And 1 pole length was considered 3 car lenghts. The last two facts were important to operatering personal when determiing where to find slow orders, changes in permanent track speeds, Limits, work orders, ect. Before radios the headend crew would count off the poles to determine when to slow down to let the tailend trainman get off the caboose to line back a siding switch to its proper position and get back on without stopping.

The pole alignment is a nominal 18 to 20 feet from the closest rail. The poles are set erect or with a slight pitch away from the track and have an average height of about 22 feet above grade... Where the lines cross a highway or a railroad track the height of the poles is gradually increased to provide minimum clearance under the lines: 18 feet for highways and 25 feet for railroad tracks... Real poles are spaced anywhere from 40 to the mile...to 26 to the mile... In model work, where distance is always a problem, a shortened spacing of about 80 scale feet is desirable.

[ramoutandabout]

well since im a lineman i would have to agree with rodgerhensley although we do use 40 foot pole in back yards also.


ray

[jwar]

If I rememberr corectley in HO, a scale speed at 60 MPH, is one secend per foot, this is a neat way of checking speeds and would look decent. Just a thought...John

[dknelson]

Thanks Roger this is truly useful information
It is worth remembering that few of us make trees that are full scale height so the same logic would suggest perhaps poles that are just a bit shorter and closer together than the prototype, just to give the selective compression of the train's surroundings some consistency.
Dave Nelson