Keeping on the straight and narrow

Where we live, trains are run on electric power which comes from a third rail on the ground – the good old Southern Electric Railway, as it used to be in my youth. But for most people, electric trains means overhead wires. That's what makes catenary on a model layout so obvious. Yet as I discovered, even getting electricity to run smoothly around metal track is hard enough – adding in the complexity of suspending wires above the track makes life much more difficult. My guess is, that is why Hornby dropped catenary, and now only produces models with non-functioning pantographs (the roof top power collectors).
  
It wasn’t always like that. Tri-ang had two attempts at working catenary. Nowadays, Marklin produces a working catenary set, and I've seen some ads suggesting Dapol might have something as well. I haven't tried either. But when I was a kid, I had a set of the second generation of the tri-ang catenary system. After all I had a train which needed it – yes as far as I was concerned – it was needed. And so I am the proud owner of an R416 15” catenary set dating from the mid 1960’s. But could I find it? Of course not. And I also remembered just what a pain it had been trying to get it to work properly when I was a kid. Back in those days, we didn’t have space to have a permanent layout – so every time I set up the trains, it meant relaying the track, and re-installing the catenary.


My main memory about it was the problems I had in trying to get the catenary to run around curves. As a kid I was bending the wires to follow the curve. But the more I researched it now, the more I became convinced that that had been the problem when I was a kid.
Real wires on real railways do not turn bends in mid-air. If they curve its because the weight in the middle between two support posts causes a downward curve. Between each support post they run straight. This is how the Marklin system works, where they recommend a support every 22.5 degrees of turn.


Well I had the engine with the pantographs. I had my son ask “what are they for?” whilst my daughter watched me closely for the answer. But no catenary to show them. Ebay to the rescue. I managed to buy another R416 set of Tri-ang catenary. Time then passed – work has this habit of getting in the way of a smooth running model train set! And before I could find the time to set up the new set, my son discovered my original set, hidden away in some boxes. Now we've got two sets of 15 feet each – and we'll have to find some place to test them! (see the video in the last post)