Catenary Wiring At Sidings

[wacampbell]

I am hoping someone can help me with correct catenary wiring at passing sidings. I am modeling the 1920's L&PS, a Southern Ontario Canada Interurban and am using my own catenary and tower models with the MSTS wire height set to 1000m so it is invisible. This allows me to provide a lot of detail, including the ability to model non-electrical track at the interchanges with the four steam roads that cross the L&PS. I have attached a period photo of the cabling at the end of the passing siding, but I can't work out what is going where. I would be grateful to hear from anyone familiar with typical interurban practice who might be able to describe the wiring arrangement - or maybe point me to a good reference book on the topic.

Thanks in advance for any help provided.

[tryagin]

First, let me welcome you, even tho things are a bit - stormy- around here.
To answer your question, as best I can, and this is according to observation of old photos of the Oregon Electric Railway which used catenary construction, but probably was a fairly standard practice, I drew up this quickie plan view of typical siding overhead construction. I hope it sheds some light on your problem.

[wacampbell]

This was very helpful. I see now that the tower on the right of my photo is anchoring the wire for the siding. It merges with the mainline wire and diverges at the switch as your drawing shows. There are a line of metal towers up the left side supporting the mainline catenary. The siding is just a single trolly wire, I think, supported by span wires between the towers and the wooden poles on the opposite side.

Thanks for the great explanation.

[tryagin]

Yah, that's how OE did it. A single trolley wire for the sidings and the regular catenary for the mainline.
Glad to help!

Tim

[smallspy]

That's how it worked for catenary set up for pantagraphs. If I'm not mistaken, the London and Port Stanley (as were most of the other Southern Ontatio interurbans) used trolley poles for power collection. If this were actually the case, then the wiring diagram above wouldn't work, because the motormen would have to physically move the trolley pole from one line to the other.

If the L&PS used trolley poles, then that wire off to the side in the first photo would be a guy wire, used to pull the overhead tight. The overhead wire junction would feature some sort of wire "switch" (for lack of a better term) that would allow the trolley pole to line itself for the proper track without any additional help from the motorman.

Toronto's streetcars use such a system...if you'd like, I can try and take photographs of the overhead, or even a quick diagram.

Dan

[msavianney]

This is not really an answer to your question, but it may be of interest. It would be easy to get a model of at least one type of L&PS car, although it is outside your timeframe. The Milwaukee 1100 car is available, and four of these cars went to the L&PS in 1941. It wouldn't take too much for me to modify the original model to put a pantograph on top, and reskin the car. Do you want one?

All the best,
Matt A

Oh yeah, I'm amazed at the things that have happened in the few weeks I've been away. Good to see traction coming along; I have a few surprises of my own to show soon...

[wacampbell]

Thanks for the comments. L&PS was actually the only southern Ontario radial to use pantographs. I think you are right in that all the others used trolly poles.

[wacampbell]

Thanks for the kind offer. The L&PS ran TMER&L 1135 and 1136 as L&PS 16 and 18 from 1941 to about 1955. 1136 was scrapped but 1135 ended up at the Illinois Railroad Museum I have many period photos of them to aid in the reskinning. The L&PS used a unique scissors type pantograph set quite high on the car as shown in the photo here. I have modelled the pan and can send you the 3ds file if you want to drop it on the car for me. Otherwise, I would be glad to do the work and send the result back to you. Please email me ( icon in the upper right of my message ) and we can exchange info off line.

[msavianney]

You have mail...

Also, that pan looks alot like the one I'd need for some Australian heavy suburban railway rolling stock that I'm working on...

Cheers,
Matt A

[smallspy]

Wow. My apologies...I *assumed* that the L&PS was the same as every other interurban in Ontario...well, we all know what happens when you assume.

Oh well, I least I learned something today...

Good luck on your project!

Dan

[tryagin]

Back to the question of trolley poles and catenary....It was customary for one of the freight crew to be the "Trolley Pup", the guy who got to hang on to the motor with one hand, and guide the trolley wheel through the wire switches with the other using the trolley-rope, and in the case of catenary and the parallel siding wire, move the trolley pole from the main wire over to the siding's wire and /or vice-versa, while still moving along just before the points. On passenger trains, this was sometimes handled by the Conductor but some runs had a trainman/brakeman to handle such chores. Just a bit of interesting stuff for yas.

Tim