Madman
Registered

Last Spring I made the mistake of venturing too quickly into building an O gauge indoor layout. Purchased some stuff without thinking it through thoroughly enough. Okay, I sorted out those errors and am still determined to build that layout some day. My main interest is electrified lines, the Pennsylvania Railroad in particular. Many years ago I had an O gauge layout but dismantled it when I made the move to large scale. SWMBO said that one railway was enough. That O gauge layout had an operating catenary with GG1s running under it. Sadly, no photos of it exist.....
At some point, when youngest daughter gets her stuff out of my attic, I am going to build that layout. I still have my original GG1 and congress ion passenger cars, along with some accessories and beau coup track. I've started building a new catenary from scratch, now that the cold dark winter days are here and I need a fix.
I'm using 1/16" diameter brass rod for the catenary and contact wires, the same as I did 35 years ago. But this time I am building it on a jig instead of in place. I am also using 1/32" diameter brass rod for the hangers. The original used all 1/16" rod. The distance between support masts will be 17" +/-. I'm still not sure what I will use for the supports masts however. The original used wood dowels. I'd like to experiment with some of the plastic structural shapes or better yet, brass shapes this time.
This new layout will not be true to scale but rather semi-scale, so that I can run Lionel post war equipment.
Here is a sample of what the catenary will look like.
And here is my Xmas present to myself for this year.


At some point, when youngest daughter gets her stuff out of my attic, I am going to build that layout. I still have my original GG1 and congress ion passenger cars, along with some accessories and beau coup track. I've started building a new catenary from scratch, now that the cold dark winter days are here and I need a fix.
I'm using 1/16" diameter brass rod for the catenary and contact wires, the same as I did 35 years ago. But this time I am building it on a jig instead of in place. I am also using 1/32" diameter brass rod for the hangers. The original used all 1/16" rod. The distance between support masts will be 17" +/-. I'm still not sure what I will use for the supports masts however. The original used wood dowels. I'd like to experiment with some of the plastic structural shapes or better yet, brass shapes this time.
This new layout will not be true to scale but rather semi-scale, so that I can run Lionel post war equipment.
Here is a sample of what the catenary will look like.
And here is my Xmas present to myself for this year.






