These questions are basically for constructing prototype-like scenery for a model railroad, with telephone poles.
(1) Anyone know why telephone poles running along tracks are sometimes buried 1/2 the length of a normal tele-pole, or are they just short poles?
(2) Do any veteran modelers here go to the trouble of running model wires along the poles?
Question #1 They are on short poles so they could reach them from the ground with a short pole. The crew carried a portable phone they could connect one wire to the rail and the other wire to the phone line by using a short pole with a clip. The phone was about the size of a bread box, not your typical phone of today.
Question 2:
There are 'wire' products manufactured for those who want to string their pole lines.
Not being that kind of masochist, I leave all but cables and power grid wires virtual. Even my juice jack pantographs glide along wires that aren't actually there.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with virtual wire between real poles)
Oh darn, I had always thought it was to get the wires low enough so copper thieves could use their tree trimmer to cut the wire. Also, our maintainer had a fear of heights.
Charlie
The poles were shorter/lower and not likely to fall on anyone so they were quickly erected. Thats why you tend to see a lot of leaning poles along the line.
In the distant past I strung wires on my layout and I think it looks great. You need to use thin material to do it or it looks goofy. I destranded dental floss for very thin looking lines and it was quite effective. Rapido also makes their "easy peasy telephone pole/line products"
At the eleven minute mark of this interesting film they show some winter line work going on.
https://www.nfb.ca/film/railroaders
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
Don't those model Tele-Poles lines collect a lot of dust?
Also, why are some T-Poles along tracks NORMAL size and NOT short?
I leave the wires off of my pole lines, so no dust
Higher poles lines may not be low voltage circuits. The taller ones could be for grid voltage, not signals or phones. They could also be modern replacements. It's probably harder to find short poles nowadays, as most treated poles are longer lengths to meet certain industry standards. It may also be to, ahem, deter copper thieves, which are more of a problem than they used to be. And it may be the case you're looking at pole lines built by different railroads, whose standards varied for things like this.
Or it could be just because...
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Big Boy Forever Don't those model Tele-Poles lines collect a lot of dust? Also, why are some T-Poles along tracks NORMAL size and NOT short?
My trainroom is virtually dust free as is the house. When we got a new furnace a few years back we spent a bunch on a top notch filter system, wow what a difference. You can always blow it off with canned air. That use to be a favourite cleaning tool for me.
Poles will be different heights depending on the situation. A general rule from what I have seen is, as we get away from city to rural to wilderness situations the poles will get much shorter. However extremely high poles are used where needed.
The Canadian Rockies might be a wilderness area that would use tall poles just because of the 50' of snowfall along the mainline.
I've normally strung some type of wire on my poles, to me it looks odd when layouts just have the poles with nothing between them.
BTW normally the poles built by the railroads parallel to their tracks were telegraph poles, not telephone poles. Railroads used telegraph for communications from the late 1850's into the 1950's, maybe later in a few areas.
By standards - "Sudden changes in the horizontal level of wires to be avoided".
If the lay of the land suddenly rose in a given area, that would necessitate the need for shorter poles.
Mark.
¡ uʍop ǝpısdn sı ǝɹnʇɐuƃıs ʎɯ 'dlǝɥ
The 'pole line' when I worked for the Burlington had Telegraph and Voice(Dispatcher) circuits. There was even a Block phone circuit for the local sub division. In the late 60's, a few old heads still used the telegraph(usually had their own 'bug' or speed key). By that time, everything was going to radio, except for issuing/copying train orders. In train service we had to 'catch' the orders, but we usually 'discussed' any strange part of the train order with the operator or the dispatcher. We did not want to get caught with a Trainmaster 'test'.
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
wjstix I've normally strung some type of wire on my poles, to me it looks odd when layouts just have the poles with nothing between them. BTW normally the poles built by the railroads parallel to their tracks were telegraph poles, not telephone poles. Railroads used telegraph for communications from the late 1850's into the 1950's, maybe later in a few areas.
What's the best HO scale line material for wires that doesn't collect much dust and lint?
I was guessing fishing line.
Some of the people I know that have actually put "wires" on their poles have used elastic thread. Its easy to glue and tie, and it has a little give to it if you bump it (which you will). Fishline will be tough to keep enough tension on to keep it straight without pulling over the poles.
One fellow made a fixture where he put a short piece of dowel through the center of the thread spool and then attached a piece of thin brass rod to the dowel a couple inches long with a small eye on the end. He could thread the line through the ey and hold the dowel playing out the line as required and had enough control that he could loop the thread around the insulators. the final itteration I saw had several of thes spools ganged together where he could wire and entire side of crossarm at once.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com