Heavy Electric Modular Group

[Green_Elite_Cab]

Well, I finally got the brass stock to build the catenary poles. The poles themselves will be relatively straight forward. I might need to review some of the PRR Dimensions, but I will need to build two pairs of extra-height poles to bring the transmission and signal lines over "Hand place", a one lane overpass and pedestrian crossing.

You can see it with Bing Bird's Eye view here-

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Here is a 1979 Aerial image of the same location (VERY Convenient!)

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://historicaerials.com?layer=1979&zoom=19&lat=40.67925484619051&lon=-74.20663565397261">http://historicaerials.com?layer=1979&z ... 3565397261</a><!-- m --> via @historicaerials

Getting the proportions right

Here is where I crossed into crazytown. Though detailed plans of every specific catenary pole probably exist (or existed at one time), god knows where those are now.

In order to get the approximate pole heights, I used bing-maps "birds eye view" to get the proportions. According to most sources, the average PRR Catenary pole was between 70' and 80'. I measured several "normal height" poles near Hand Place with a ruler pressed against my screen to confirm uniformity. I made sure to remain in the same "picture" as I did this, since if you move too much, you will be given a different photo of the same location. I found that several normal height poles were 27mm tall on screen, then 30 mm tall, and then 33 mm tall on either side of "hand place".


Though these numbers cannot be reliable converted to actual feet, I can use them to create a proportion to match the prototype. Assuming a range of 70 to 80 feet, for the "intermediate height" pole, the height may be 77 feet to 88.8 feet, and for the poles on either side of hand place, the pole may be 85.5 to 97.77 feet tall.

This means whatever I choose to be my standard height, I can at least make them proportionally higher. At the very least, the slope is "linear". What I'll need to do, is determine roughly what the minimum allowable distance is between the signal lines and the transmission lines vs the ground and each other. This will make it very easy to determine whether I want to go closer to the 70 or 80 foot mark. building a mock-up of the Hand Place bridge will help as well.

More fun with math

Though I suspect I did some of this work already and lost it, I again used the aerial photographs to "approximate" the distances between major structures on the prototype. The pole spacing on my module is very similar to the average pole spacing on tangent track. Though I cannot gurantee that is the case here, it seems reasonable then to position the "Hand Place" overpass in a proportional location relative to the catenary poles on either side.

On the module, the catenary poles are spaced 2.5' apart, and 1.25' from the ends (for uniformity).

Using the Historic Aerials shot (which seemed closer to vertical), I measured the distance between poles as being 95 mm. The distances between the easternmost pole and the bridge abutments was 46 mm, between the westernmost pole and the other side of the abutment was 27.5 mm, and the bridge abutment itself was 21.5 mm. Fortunately, there was no fudging here, and everything added up to the total distance.

Heading "eastbound", the abutment should begin about 8 11/16" from the first catenary pole, and it should end 1' 2 9/16" from the next pole.

I measured the overpass itself (which is actually smaller than the abutments, it appears "half" the bridge was never built), and that came out to 9.5 mm. In real inches, this translates to exactly 3". As it turns out, this DOES appear to match closely the prototypical width of the bridge!

I know this from my use of the "rix" highway overpass kits. They are also just above 3" wide, but there is BARELY enough room for even two lanes of traffic with NO shoulders. With a side walk taking up a portion of that, that would certainly cut the traffic down to a single lane!

To confirm, I used google's Street view to transport myself there virtually. As luck would have it, some cars and trucks were following the google van that day. At least to my eye, the width of the road way is consistent with the estimations I made by measuring the aerial photographs.

This makes me feel that my estimations are probably fairly close to reality. Short of going out and measuring it myself, I think this is "good enough".

North Elizabeth Station Part 1: The "West" End

This diagram has the catenary poles, and the Hand Place Bridge, placed to scale where they should be. Some of the other details like the parking lots and houses/apartments are approximate.

I hope by may to at least have the terrain and the catenary poles down. I might also have a mock-up of the Hand place bridge installed. I'm considering making a "brass" skeleton to solder the bridge brackets too, and then covering this up with styrene to make it look like concrete.

Lots of structure scratch building in my future! The station platforms are to the right hand side.