I’m building this Cornerstone Series (933-3025) model. I want to put wires on the transformers. I did a search and didn’t find anything about what you use for the wires. Any tips on how to get the wires connected to the transformers would be much appreciated also
Those wires would be a very heavy gauge, most likely bare steel cable. We have that kit on our HO scale club layout, where the nearest thing I could find was light blue sewing thread. It was fastened with CA.
Cacole,
Doesn’t the kit come with the black cable that’s attached to the top some of the transformers??
Mike
The “wire” used in electrical substations is in most cases copper or aluminum tubing. This tubing can support itself better than wire between insulators. Looking at the Walthers sub the high voltage side would be the 2’ to 3’ range. The low voltage side could be up to 4’. Use steel music wire or any firm solid wire.
Everything was in the kit EXCEPT the heavy cables connected to that left-most transformer. On the kit we have, which is around 5 years old, there were no cables to connect to that transformer. Walthers has apparently modified the kit or we received a kit with missing parts.
I just bought this kit a couple of months ago, no cables. Do you have to put CA on the thread to stiffen it up?
I’m new to the hobby and am currently in the research phase of modeling the coal handling yard at my local fossil fueled power plant, at which I also currently work. The lines coming into our plant’s 230KV yard that goes to our generators main transformers are around 500MCM wire…heavy stuff. Not quite as big as what I think is on the main 230KV transmission lines (1000MCM?). But it is actually wire in our high voltage yards.
If my calculations are correct, 1000MCM is around 1.1" diameter, which scales down to about 1/64 of an inch in the HO gauge of 1:87 scale. 500MCM is around 7/8" in diameter. I haven’t researched what I’m going to use for these lines (neither in the yard nor on the transmission lines) but I wouldn’t use piano or steel wire simply due to its propensity to rust. I would go with a pale green cord/thread to simulate aging copper or a haze grey for aluminum.
One note of detail, if you use the grey/aluminum path, anywhere the wire joins up with anything, there is a crimped fitting. whether you model the fitting or not (which of course would be very tiny), take a darker grey wash out about 6 scale inches (1/16") wherever the connection points are. All high voltage fittings will create heat of some level. This heat changes the color of the aluminum wire wherever that crimp fitting is.
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I’m thinking he has finished that model a couple years ago. [swg]
I used very small gauge solid hookup wire for mine. I stripped the insulation off the wire and as it was tinned it looks like the aluminum tubing used in the real thing. The problem I found with the kit was that the placement of the equipment didn’t seem to match what I’ve seen in real life and I couldn’t figure out a logical flow of input to output without the connections getting mixed up with each other. I plan to disassemble it and rearrange the parts to be more like what I’ve observed in real life.