Telephone or Power wiring?

[Anonymous]

I've seen some extremely beautiful model railroad pictures that make me say "Is it real or another great model"? In most pictures that make me say this, I can determine by looking at the Telephone or power poles, the ones that do not have any cables turn my head. Are most modelers not including the cable due to the fact the cable might not be to scale, or is this an oversight? Being fairly new to the hobby (16 years, age 11-27 current), I notice most great model railroads have detailed poles with no cables. Maybe I have not payed close enough attention, but I'm curious why cabling does not exist on some models. Maybe a more experienced fellow modeler can shed some light on the dust in this shed.

Mike Wilson
[e-mail]
Lancaster, CA

For those Interested : I'm currently building a small N-Scale model railroad to be given as a gift to someone who wants but can not afford.

[Dough]

I'm glad that you asked this because I have always wondered the exact same thing!

[Anonymous]

Cable exists fr it, but it's very time consuming to do. if you take a standard set of poles with 4 lines on it, and you run it around your layout. you'd have to run wires from the poles to various buildings (all buildings in a pre-modern city or town).

Since you place a pole about every 6" or so, on an average 4x8 oval, that's about 38 poles, with 4 glueing points each, so you'd glue about 152 spots, making sure the cable staying in place while the glue dried, then cleaning it up so that it didn't look glued. and that's just the poles around an oval, now bring in the side turns, the town or industries poles, roadside poles, and you start to see you can spend months just doing telephone and power wiring.

Get's even worse if you want to do Cantanary wiring over the tracks. First the posts are pretty expensive, and instead of glueing here, you have to solder and be really sure the entire line is smooth.

Combine the two and you have yourself a good year to two year project on your hands. Some models just don't want to spend that much time on details like this, others do, and do it well.

[CNJ831]

Well, first of all, a multitude of powerlines are sure to get in your way when you are working on or operating the layout. Except in a truly rural scene, the number of individual power and phone lines could be upwards of a dozen, a nightmare to reproduce. Done right, these would take many, many hours to anchor in place even over only a small distance, only to possibly be wiped away by a careless motion of the hand in a split second. Some modelers have had modest success using flexible, elastic lines which can stand up to minor abuse. But these, like most other materials so used, look far to thick to be realistic. From the distance we usually view our models, scale-size powerlines would thin as human hairs and be just about invisible most of the time.

A second serious problem is that no material currently on the market will reproduce and hold the characteristic "sag" alway present in prototype power and phone lines between poles. If you sag lines made of wire, thread, elastic, nylon fishing line, etc., they will wiggle and sway most unprototypically any time a train passes or you bump the layout. On the other hand, stretch your model power lines tight between poles and they immediately look just as unrealistic.

CNJ831

[Anonymous]

I agree with CNJ831, the prototypical 'sag' is very difficult to reproduce effectively in HO. It's one of those things.

If you have a Railroad with the scenics and details far enough on to be able to spend the time to model the telephone lines, then feel free to do it .

However, when you next look at photos of the real thing, you may notice that you can't always make out the cables, unless they're silouetted against the sky.

Jon

[Anonymous]

If you are a true prototype modeler and like to add the fine detail that sets your layout apart from all others here is a suggestion for pole wire.

A 1" diameter cable at HO scale (.1378" = 1') would be .0114833". A single strand of seven-strand 20 ga. speaker wire mic's to .012. About 1/2 thousandth to thick, but whos ta tell ya... "That wire ain't to scale!!"

With good eyes or, like me you use a 5x magnifier, it would be possible to string real wire. If you use real wire you could then connect a low power intercomm system making it possible to speak to someone at the other end of your layout. [:O]

However, in my case, when the trains are not running you can hear someone whisper from the other end of the layout (5'x12') so it's not worth the effort.

I didn't caluclate the sag as I don't know the distance apart you will be putting the poles. You will have to research the standard pole spacing with the road you model and the power company for the area you model to find out what their standard pole spacing is. We may have an engineer out here that has the formula for calulating sag. I know that it has something to do with the weight of one foot of cable, the span distance and the earth's gravitational pull at a specified longitude.

If anyone out there does string wire on the poles get us some pictures, I for one would like to see how your project turned out.

[Jetrock]

The main problem I can see with stringing wire is layout access--since the lines are almost always near the tracks, I'd worry about interference from the 0-5-0 switcher (human hand) all the time. I'm something of a "hands-on" person when it comes to layout operation--I'd rather throw switches and uncouple by hand than use automatic control--so power lines would become a problem.

I'm already looking for ways to avoid this hassle when I install overhead--but I figure that the lines for trolley overhead will be enough stuff to avoid, without adding power lines.

Most people won't notice their absence because most people tune out things like power lines. Bringing them into focus can definitely change the way someone reacts to a scene--a few artists, like Robert Crumb, have made a point of including those details in their work. As modelers, we often choose to model things that aren't necessarily aesthetically pleasing to the general public--rust, grime, dust and grease are all standard colors and themes we use, and weathering is a sub-skill of model railroading all its own.

Perhaps modeling these details is a step in creating that atmosphere we seek--although they're no substitute for the overall general picture. Beautifully hung power poles stuck in green-painted plywood would definitely be incongruous...