Caledonian railway telegraph poles , part 1
Dead easy, several suppliers make plastic ones. Buy some and plant them ?
Well, no. These are not any old telegraph poles, these are the telegraph poles of the Caledonian railway. As with so many aspects of pre-grouping different railways did things in a different manner. “Signalling the Caledonian” by Jim Summers has an entire chapter on the subject giving many details and a couple of useful pictures of the L+D under construction so combined with photos from elsewhere I know what I’m trying to build.
So, for my location and period big A frame poles where possible, though single poles if space is limited. Alternate long / short crossarms with two insulators. The original shackle type insulators were replaced very early on, so Cordeaux style insulators on J hangers.
Stripwood and dowel from Cornwall model boats, insulators from Express models. I had a play about on the bench. Hmm. It didn’t take long to realise that in order to make a consistent set of parts and assemble the posts in an accurate manner the first part of the exercise would be to manufacture a set of jigs.
This is what I have come up with. This photo shows the three crossarm jigs, a bit of square brass tube with holes in and a catch as an end stop in two sizes. Wood in, drill holes, lift catch, slide out. The lower one has the catch tube in two parts forming a place to bend the J hangers. The one on the left is to hold the crossarm while superglueing the J hangers in.
A photo of an assembly jig laminated up from bits cut on the silhouette.
That’s the method, should keep me busy for a bit.
Edited by Dave John
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