Going to put a few phone poles on my diorama. Ordered the Berkshire Junction E-Z Line as I wanted to see how this works, seemed to have good reviews. Also bought the Rix telephone cross arms, but the LHS was out of the poles… SO, I bought a wood dowel. My first questions is, for my 50’s era set-up how approximately how tall should I make the poles? I purchased the small diameter green line and the larger charcoal line thinking that I would combine phone and power on one pole. Would this work?
When I was a child in the 1960’s most of the poles ‘round here were 30 footers (35’ with five in the ground). All of the new ones are 40 footers. There are still a lot of very old ones around. Even a few that look to be only 20-25 feet and rather thin. There is an old telegraph pole in my yard 35 feet above ground. It used to have around eight crossarms and dates from the early 1920’s. The one that it replaced and a second much taller pole are shown in a 1900 photo.
Click here for context. This was before they added crossarms and raised the shorter poles.
I have some plastic poles made by Model Power. They are roughly 3 13/16" high, plus you will want to tack on about a half inch to stick in the “ground.” The top crossarm will be about 1/8’ from the top of the pole, and each consecutive crossarm will be spaced 3/16" apart- with 1/4" angle supports going from the center of the poles to each crossarm.
There’s also a very informative article in the 2006 issue of How to Build Realistic Layouts about line poles that you might find handy. The article is on pg. 30-33 and is called “Stringing details in the sky”. I thought it was very well done.
Low voltage (24-48 volt) wires were commonly strung on the same poles as telegraph and telephone wires. These low voltage lines were used for trackside signals and crossing signals. If you’re asking about typical high voltage AC lines, those would not have been used on the same poles both for safety reasons and the methods of distribution. Safety was an issue for a lineman working on the other types of lines and high voltage AC lines need substations, which weren’t usually close to the tracks. They also needed stepdown transformers, which would have to be mounted on the same pole as the AC electric lines. The combination of high voltage lines and stepdown transformers would have been lethal to railroad linesmen.
Ok, I feel a tad embarrassed. I opened up the Rix bag of cross arms and on the back of the cardboard insert is a rather complete set of instructions, hits for painting, gluing, as well how to place the poles on your layout! Kudos Rix. And also for the quick replies :o)
LOL. I thought I remember those instructions coming with my Rix poles and cross arms. I’ve got about 50 of them and, if there’s any way you can order the poles on-line, I’d do it rather than using wood dowels. The Rix poles are very well detailed and, with the cross arms and poles both being styrene, you’ll find that a little CA holds things together quite nicely. Another hint is to get some green glitter nail polish the next time you’re at Wallyworld. Put a small dab on each insulator and you’ll be amazed at how much they look like green glass.
UP2, just painted 10 cross arm insulators with gloss green and gloss white in a random pattern, and I’m not really that pleased with the green. I’ve seen plenty of them insulators - That’s a good tip to use the nail polish… and I’m thinking the same thing with the wood dowels, they just don’t look at good as the cross arms. Guess I’ll head to another LHS - AFTER I make a phone call. But hey, this is why I’m doing a diorama! Figure out all these things out.
Just a quick up-date on the poles. I was at the LHS and saw a bottle of pearlized green and white paint (for cars and such) so I bought 'em. Just got done re-painting and they look MUCH better.
Those short poles were most likely the telephone, telegraph. signal, and Western Union circuits. That is why there are so many cross arms and insulators. They were strung with bare copper wires, which attained the bluish green patina that is formed on copper by exposure to the elements which is why they looked green. They were strung on greenish or clear insulators and usually followed the terrain, up and over the ridge when the track was in cuts, etc. They had tin medallions nailed to them to identify which circuits were on each crossarm.
The New Haven also had another set on the opposite side trhat carried differant circuits, possibly the signaling.
Testors (the little glass model bottles) has a metallic green that works well for insulators too. The metallic particles are really fine and give it a nice reflective property without looking like “sparkles” !!!
