Garden Railway Forum

telegragh poles has anyone got any on there railway id like to make some rather than buy some how high should I make them??????????????

Just been outside to measure the one in my garden and its around 40ft!

I made some for the DVLR Mark. 1, I bought some dowel from Jewsons. cut it into lengths
drilled a hole up the bottom for some coat hanger wire and stuck them in.

It was the arms at the top that I couldn't get right. They'd allways fall off!.

I think they are round!! I've made a few. 12" high 1/2" diameter dowel. 2"x 1/8th inch square crossmembers x 3. Slot the poles to 1/8th inch and pin to pole. Use brass wire for steps. Insulators 3mm copper pipe cut to 6mm lengths then pinned and superglued. More details on request.,

The poles are only one part of the system...... what about the wires?

I used thin electrical wire (which was brown - I think I recall painstakingly painting a section black but gave up)

The wires took the power for the bell code system I had set up back then.

Yes, but do they withstand the test of time? I guess they are vulnerable to all kinds of weather/livestock problems, as well as simple access for maintenance.

Copper wire Peter! 12v max! It doesn't need insulation.

METHSSNIFFER:93841 wrote:Copper wire Peter! 12v max! It doesn't need insulation.

So no 'glow in the dark' felines then?

What with 12 volts unlikely!

I was more concerned with damage caused to the delicate wires due to them being between the operator, (clumsy me, for example) and something I might want to rescue due to failure on the line!

In real practice tps are 50yds apart in scale working to 16mm standards they would be 8ft apart. They carry wire on one side of the track. On narrow gauge the maximun no. of wires you would see is one or two. It shouldn't cause a problem.
As wires are carried to buildings, a model village would be more complex obviously. If the wire goes underground then insulation is required. I duct my wire in this case. Where a pole terminates it should have a supporting pole at 30 degrees attached 4ft, 64mm from its top. Also the top should be chamfered.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/0-40mm-ENAMEL ... 20daa47efd

8ft. span between supporting poles seems to me to be a long way, (not disputing your maths!) but that is a lot of free fragile wire to get in the way of access to the rest of the layout.
How many garden railway modellers go to that extreme?
Also, I'm curious to know what you use the 12v it carries for?

12volts supplies lighting, pond pump, mister, all grain of wheat bulbs smoke generators etc etc. The cottage is fitted out with log fire, bed side lamps and sound effects.

Can you remember washing lines!

If it works in real practice it works in scale. My poles are approx 5 ft apart as its proportional to its scale.

METHSSNIFFER:93847 wrote:
Can you remember washing lines!

Cheeky!!!!! I'm old enough to remember washing lines when they were straight, not on a rotating pole system!

Apart from that, it is interesting to know what you operate with your power supply and, as I am still new to this garden railway thing, I had no idea what was going on in the great outdoors!
I guess it depends on how your railway is set up. I have run power wires underneath my boards to power points and lights but if this is not possible then your idea is a good alternative. I still have concerns about how vulnerable they are to damage.
Also, it is not clear from looking at other members railways if this is common practice!

Depends what you are looking for in a model and what you are trying to portray. I don't follow common practice. I'm not interested in a circle of track and playing trains. I model real practice in the scale of 16mm.
For the reason that Mr Bond painted his wires black, I've yet to see a man from the electricity board go up a ladder and bloody paint a live wire in black paint. Is that common practice!!
So if one is to model, use the methods as near to the real thing as you can, stop asking stupid, pathetic questions like how do you make a "telegraph pole" go out and look at a real one and work it out!!!!!

If you want further advise on outdoor electrification I suggest you email me

Calm Down, calm Down methsniffer. He can ask questions if he wants... That's what this forum is for.

Mine are 12mm dowel 390mm long with the top chamfered at 45deg either side to form a point to shed water. Some poles had thin metal roofs and this is made from thin metal.

The beam is 4x5mm hardwood fixed to the pole with 2 small pins. This fixes into a rebate sawn with a razor saw and "chiselled out" with a knife.

The whole is then rubbed with dark oak furniture stain. The insulators were formed of a panel-pin cut to length with 2 small 3mm diameter seed beads (self coloured slightly silvered) glued on each pin. That is two per insulator. This is not scale but looks okay from 6ft rule.

The steps would be easy to form with wire but I cheated as I had some whitemetal ones.

I don't bother with the wire as to my eyes (personal view) tensioned wires look worse than none. I would love wires if I could get then to droop appropriately. However the 1:1 world doen't have 45ft mauradering beasties to cope with.







BTW don't foget that in rural roads some TPs had road lights on them as well. Also possibley one with a post-box.

RylstonLight:93863 wrote:
I don't bother with the wire as to my eyes (personal view) tensioned wires look worse than none. I would love wires if I could get then to droop appropriately. However the 1:1 world doen't have 45ft mauradering beasties to cope with.

Now this is the sort of information I was looking for!

I totally agree that wires can be so overpowering that all you see are the wires themselves and miss the fine detail of lamps and post boxes (which I love).
My low voltage supplies are already taken care of so I don't need overheads too. Apart from that, my two dogs are perfectly capable of pushing their way through flimsy wires and the resultant tangle could cause untold destruction to other parts of my scenery....... I think I'll pass on this one!

RylstonLight - Thank you, I found that most helpful.

METHSSNIFFER -

"For the reason that Mr Bond painted his wires black, I've yet to see a man from the electricity board go up a ladder and bloody paint a live wire in black paint." My reply to this is that all I had at the time was bright blue wire, black would have been much better but to paint them was found to be too arduous. It was an experiment which admittedly didn't work but there is no need for that sort of comment.

"go out and look at a real one and work it out!!!!! " jim@NAL's second post shows that he already has

"stop asking stupid, pathetic questions like how do you make a "telegraph pole"" - That sort of question is not stupid at all. jim@NAL wanted to know how other people had done it and as a result quite a few of us have learned something useful. This forum, as you well know, is a place where people can ask all questions from the basic to the complicated without the fear of being ridiculed and safe in the knowledge that the responses they get will be to the best of the other member's abilities or knowledge. You yourself have used this forum in this way before I refer you to the topics
"Crazy Nut!"
and
"Darjeeling Drawings"
I'm rather disappointed by your comment.