Tutorial for Electric power lines

[peter1jeep]

Hi All, I am having fun with TRS 2009 but I am having trouble with joining the wires for the electric trains, I have laid the pylons, found out that you have to start the pylons from the left, if you want the pylons to stay on the left side etc. but when I come to the junction of lines, say, at a junction or station, joining to the main line, I cannot seem to get them looking good and looking joined, I know the train runs with out the line but it doesn't look good that way, is there a tutorial for electrics??

peter1jeep

 

[philskene]

I certainly hope that there is 'cause I think I did DowntownTraction the hard way by pacing individual poles and then adding the wire. It was the only way I could control the placement of the poles. A real pain though it probably looks OK in the end.

(Mods - please not that the images are indeed oversize, but they are highly compressed.)

Phil

 

[Mikeinva]

I'm currently working on a new route using twin tracked TGV's(running in a shuttle mode on each track) & just keep the pentographs retracted during the run....sure it doesn't look as good without the lines but at least the trains can run without them & after reading this thread I'm glad I havn't gone through the process of trying to add them myself.

 

[martinvk]

Of course it takes some work to place the overhead wires and supports. Did you think the real ones placed themselves? :wave: So take your time and then the end result will be something to be proud of.

Some ideas. Don't know about the USA but in Holland, the overhead is placed in a zig-zag pattern to equalize the wear on the pantograph pickup shoes. From the pantograph's point of view, the wire moves back and forth across the width of the pickup shoe.

In curves, the poles are usually on the outside of the curve. It is easier to pull the overhead into the correct location than pushing. Depending on the design of the supports, the pole could be on the inside of the curve and still have the wire pulled by extending the horizontal arms beyond the track and attaching the overhead wire guides on the ends of the arms.

The overhead wire is placed in sections of about 1600m long with each end terminating in a tensioning device to keep everything nice and tight. The span between consecutive poles is about 60m but this can vary a lot depending on local conditions. There is a two span overlap between sections to accommodate the tensioning devices.

Have fun. Even though it is all simulated and electric engines run fine without any overhead in the neighbourhood, it all looks much better if you try to keep it prototypical.

 

[peter1jeep]

Is there an electrical turorial

Many thanks for the replies, I see it will be a hard job to get them right so when I have some extra spare time I will try to do something about it, in the meantime I hope there is a tutorial.

Peter

Good layout, thanks for the outside curve tip Martinvk

 

[bassist118]

There should be pylons as individual objects for the catenary your using and the wire as a seperate spline. Carry on using pylon splines for long sections but use the individual object pylons and wire splines for the junctions. It does take a while but looks great.



Andy