Pylons .

[L2's are great!]

Now this is one oddity that ive never seen of before. 

[Daniel Beardsmore]

It would help to have the links along with the pictures, so that we don’t have to faff about finding the way to the same location to get better angles, examine successive towers along the line etc (necessary to identify those baby L8s, for example).

 

Based on what meagre data I have managed to acquire so far, I guess the distant towers are height-extended L8 (top part is L8, bottom part I have no data for). The close-up one seems to be the body of L2 D60 (with the wedge top instead of the pyramid top of D10/D30), combined with the D60 inner-angle crossarms on both sides.

 

I am guessing that by “oddity” you mean the idea of an L2 with unusually short crossarms?

[L2's are great!]

13 minutes ago, Daniel Beardsmore said:

It would help to have the links along with the pictures, so that we don’t have to faff about finding the way to the same location to get better angles, examine successive towers along the line etc (necessary to identify those baby L8s, for example).

 

Based on what meagre data I have managed to acquire so far, I guess the distant towers are height-extended L8 (top part is L8, bottom part I have no data for). The close-up one seems to be the body of L2 D60 (with the wedge top instead of the pyramid top of D10/D30), combined with the D60 inner-angle crossarms on both sides.

 

I am guessing that by “oddity” you mean the idea of an L2 with unusually short crossarms?

Ill find a link, this was just a screengrab i did a while back that i came across. Yeah its a one of a kind I believe with the D60 wedge however arms of an L2 D10 tower. As the line is L2/L8 i can guess that it was added in as a spare using bits that they had from decommissioned towers. The L8's are just bog standard L8's with refurbed insulators. 

[L2's are great!]

17 minutes ago, Daniel Beardsmore said:

It would help to have the links along with the pictures, so that we don’t have to faff about finding the way to the same location to get better angles, examine successive towers along the line etc (necessary to identify those baby L8s, for example).

 

Based on what meagre data I have managed to acquire so far, I guess the distant towers are height-extended L8 (top part is L8, bottom part I have no data for). The close-up one seems to be the body of L2 D60 (with the wedge top instead of the pyramid top of D10/D30), combined with the D60 inner-angle crossarms on both sides.

 

I am guessing that by “oddity” you mean the idea of an L2 with unusually short crossarms?

The tower is situated on the Stalybridge junction line that comes off the Rochdale to Ferrybridge route. Just by Littleborough

[Daniel Beardsmore]

21 minutes ago, L2's are great! said:

Ill find a link, this was just a screengrab i did a while back that i came across. Yeah its a one of a kind I believe with the D60 wedge however arms of an L2 D10 tower. As the line is L2/L8 i can guess that it was added in as a spare using bits that they had from decommissioned towers. The L8's are just bog standard L8's with refurbed insulators. 

 

I can’t be sure of the crossarms from that angle, but D10/D30 have a pyramid top, D60 has a wedge top. The body is the stouter type from D60 (width, bracing pattern). The crossarm height lines up with the bracing exactly as it should with D60 (D10 crossarms would not), so that suggests that it’s all D60 parts. Looking at the plans, the D60 crossarms’ inner-angle-side lengths correspond precisely (5.334 m, 5.639 m, 6.477 m) with those of both sides of D10, so this is basically D10 made from an adapted D60.

 

The L8 towers don’t match the drawings and appear to be height extended. I don’t have any height extension drawings for those. There is virtually nothing visual on L8 or L12 anywhere, though L8 appears in some PDFs without a caption.

[pharrc20]

3 hours ago, L2's are great! said:

Now this is one oddity that ive never seen of before. 

Hmm yes, I had forgotten about this one. I am in two minds whether this ZPA line from the tee from the main ZP line near Lydgate, Littleborough down to the substation at Stalybridge was built as L2 from new and later mostly replaced by L8 later on and some L2 towers re-used as needed. Or it was built new with a mix of mainly L8 and some L2 towers as needed. I would hazard a guess that the reason the L8 towers were used was mainly due to the high ground and potential for poor weather and strong wind conditions during the autumn to spring months as conductor clashing was not uncommon on L2s, hence the wider cross-arms on the L8 towers to try and alleviate this problem. I thought I had mapped this line but cannot put my finger on the file now so will have a look again.

 

To me this looks like a D60 body and tower peak but using the short inside turn cross-arms on both sides of the tower. Interestingly, the towers where the line crosses the M62 were replaced in the late 80s/early 90s and two new L6 D10/30 towers erected in place presumably to give greater clearance over the motorway and also greater anchor spans where the line crosses a deep long valley, just to the south of the motorway, with an L2 D and D10/30 on the other side. What I do know is that the ZP line was completed in 1957 and the ZPA tee in 1962.

 

Cheers Paul

[Daniel Beardsmore]

1 hour ago, pharrc20 said:

To me this looks like a D60 body and tower peak but using the short inside turn cross-arms on both sides of the tower.

 

So, we have one vote cast for “crossarm” meaning “arm on one side” …

 

Incidentally, my nomination for the award of “Tower Misuse” goes to Luton, where there is an L4 DT being used as a D60 (other side from the road to Luton South Substation so I have no idea what they wanted to terminate with it), and further along (near Slip End and Woodside) there are two L4 DJTs with the tee arms absent that have been menially assigned D30 duty, straddling the M1.

 

More confusingly, there is an L7 D30 with a non-standard top crossarm extension and a sealing end platform that doesn’t go anywhere — it’s just a through tower. Next to that is the only SWE PL16 D2 I have ever seen in person (all “Scottish” D2 around here), then onto those abused L4 DJTs.

 

I don’t know how the Elstree–Sundon network was set up originally, but the line from Redbourn to Luton is de-energised at both ends. Both the SEP and SEC spanning the A1081 at Luton have had their downleads removed; there is or at least was an underground cable below the road, I assume. At Redbourn the line may have terminated at a proper L7 DT, but any termination that existed is now gone and I have no idea what was meant to happen as I don’t know of anywhere for the underground cables to have gone. Next tower, an L7 DJT (or what I am taking to be one — very little in the way of L7 data) that tees off to Piccotts End, Hemel Hempstead. The cables spanning the insulators of that L7 DT at Redbourn are gone, disconnecting that cable run at the Redbourn end as well as the Luton end. (I’ve updated OpenStreetMap so that this all shows correctly on the Open Infrastructure Map now.)

 

Some of this is covered on today’s upload batches. The Redbourn pylon photos (below) from July last year are some of the hardest to recover and need redoing, next summer I guess now as there is diminishing sunlight and cloudy-day photos all look lousy, so I’ll dump the nasty old photos here …

 

L7 DJT (I guess), and first PL16 heading towards Hemel, viewed from Redbourn:

 

 

L7 DT with no termination, and span wires removed:

 

 

How did I mess up this shot quite as much as I did?

 

 

L7 DJT close-up (as much as 3× zoom can muster). Levels and smudges possibly salvageable (I have some photos I just cannot fix) but so badly framed … Back to PL1a in the distance. (Further along, there are PL1a, L4 and PL16 deviation towers — might go for those this weekend now that I have discovered a good way to walk to them all.)

 

 

Considering that this was the day I dropped the camera a couple of feet onto the road (with the lens barrel extended), I suppose I am lucky that I have managed to take all the photos I have taken since in spite of that.

 

PL1a to the north as well (on a less clement day last September, and with most towers out of range):

 

Edited September 14, 2022 by Daniel Beardsmore
Proofreading!

[pharrc20]

The tower data I have for the ZPA line describes tower 42 next to the A640 road as shown in the photo link above as being an L2 D60 dated 1961.

 

Unfortunately, tower misuse is rife it seems, there is PL1 D60 used as a D tower not far from the old long gone Agecroft power station north-west of Manchester, once seemingly used to diverge either a PL1 D line from an S line or two S lines. One line is now long but used to run to Whitegate/Chadderton power station and the other is still largely in place and runs towards Kearsley and the former power station there.

 

Cheers Paul

[L2's are great!]

11 hours ago, pharrc20 said:

The tower data I have for the ZPA line describes tower 42 next to the A640 road as shown in the photo link above as being an L2 D60 dated 1961.

 

Unfortunately, tower misuse is rife it seems, there is PL1 D60 used as a D tower not far from the old long gone Agecroft power station north-west of Manchester, once seemingly used to diverge either a PL1 D line from an S line or two S lines. One line is now long but used to run to Whitegate/Chadderton power station and the other is still largely in place and runs towards Kearsley and the former power station there.

 

Cheers Paul

Thats bizzare. Must of been altered when the line was assumingly diverted.

[saxokid]

On 04/11/2018 at 17:49, Pylon King said:

For anyone wanted to add detailing to their tower/substation models , Sankey Scenics produce an excellent range of scale warning signs.

I also use these on my pylons and substations 👍

[Daniel Beardsmore]

On 20/10/2019 at 18:43, SM42 said:

Been out and about with the camera again and noticed this strange (to me anyway) arrangement

 

 

I don’t know where on earth you saw this. I managed to find this from your description:

 

 

In the background you can see a PL1-family¹ deviation tower, and next to it one of the DD types.

 

The foreground towers are curious. (At least) two types of double-circuit tower have that tapered wedge peak that is flush with the top crossarm: PL4 and PL16. Since the Tower Bible is woefully incomplete (doubly so) we have no record of a PL4 single-circuit and no depiction of Scottish DD2 or any of Scottish single-circuit (both PL16). We don’t even have a designation for double-earth single-circuit: “DS” perhaps? Your double-earth single-circuit I suppose is PL4 since it is in the vicinity of a PL4 DD30 (not in the Tower Bible). There are some DD2 towers “near” me that match yours, and it would appear at the Tower Bible’s PL4 DD2 has an erroneous bracing member (unique to the DD2 drawing and not seen in real DD2s).

 

Those two in my screenshot, though: they could be PL4 or PL16. The height of the wedge peak is more like PL16. Not sure why there is such a mixture: turn 180° on Chadwick Lane and both lines use a PL1-family tower. PL16 single-circuit is said to exist, so I seem to recall, but no drawings for it seem to be known.

 

¹ still pending evidence to differentiate PL1 and PL1b, and whatever the “PL1S” is that people mention from time to time without explanation. Possibly shorthand for one or more of “PL1 S2”, “PL1 or PL1b S2”, “PL1 single-circuit”, “PL1 or PL1b single-circuit”, or even including PL1a in amongst those … hard to tell when people are imprecise and none of this knowledge has been properly collated.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

On 11/10/2019 at 20:10, SM42 said:

Ok

 

Now you have really started something. I can't go anywhere without noticing our steely friends. I've never given them  a second glance or even noticed they were there until I read this.  Now I see them everywhere.

 

Here for your delight are some photos from my recent travels in the local area. 

Enjoy

 

 

Curious … another J L Eve DT variation. (Anyone else watch Spellbinder growing up?)

 

Same design as that found in the Luton area (Bramingham, Sundon, Westoning) but with an extended top crossarm:

 

 

(Pictures from Saturday)

[SM42]

6 minutes ago, Daniel Beardsmore said:

 

I don’t know where on earth you saw this. I managed to find this from your description:

 

 

 

 

These are near the site of the old Stourport on Severn power station as the line climbs up out of the valley and across Hartlebury Common. 

 

Andy

 

 

[Daniel Beardsmore]

18 minutes ago, SM42 said:

 

These are near the site of the old Stourport on Severn power station as the line climbs up out of the valley and across Hartlebury Common. 

 

Andy

 

… I see …

 

52.33790° N 2.26410° W (The Grove, Stourport-on-Severn, between Willowdene and Pinedene) puts you right under the wires: facing east you get the double-circuit PL4, and facing west, the PL1-family and unidentified (maybe PL4) deviation towers, L4 or L4m DT in the background.

 

(There are hints that L4 was metric from its inception, making them all L4M, L4m or L4 (M) depending how you choose to write it: one PDF—Protean and POC-MAST design—uses all four forms in the same document, as well as giving both 1975 and 1977 as the year of introduction.)

[Daniel Beardsmore]

On 23/08/2019 at 00:24, Pylon King said:

 

What happened to the rest of this drawing? The peak is cut off, as is all the other information around it. (So many diagrams here get cropped to pieces for some reason.) I have some BB L6 drawings, but the reproduction quality is poor. The crossarm bracing in the diagram above matches the D60 I photographed on Saturday (just outside of Sundon Substation), whereas the drawings I have are sufficiently bad that I cannot be sure that there aren’t any lines missing. The inner vertical bracing member of the outer middle crossarm can also be above the horizontal member, so it’s clear that Balfour Beatty did adapt/alter the design.

 

The inner diagram shows no bracing at all! Possibly an error, but possibly some were made with no vertical bracing at all.

[Ian McAulay]

Hi Folks

 

I've been a lurking member of RMWeb for years, but wasn't aware of this thread until Daniel alerted me to it. (I've been in email correspondence with him over the last few weeks.)

 

I'm an architect by training, but have actually worked in computer visualisation and mapping for environmental assessment for most of my career (now ended since retirement in 2016). A recurring theme has been power line projects, some quite big.

 

I was active on the PAS board some years ago with the handle Dr Fortran, but haven't been involved in anything online about pylons for a long time. I'm still catching up with the discussions, but I'll chip in if I see anything where I can contribute.

 

Ian

[SHMD]

Welcome Ian.

 

 

Kev.

 

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Hello from me too!

[pharrc20]

Hello Ian, I'm also from the PAS forum as yv47r.

 

Cheers Paul

[Ian McAulay]

I did a bit more investigating on L2's Are Great's posting of the odd tower photo above. The tower is at OS grid reference SD 96098 10973, just west of Denshaw village and just south of where the line crosses the A640. Tower number ZPA042. It's listed on the National Grid network database as L2 D60 but it's pretty clear that it has short crossarms both sides. (Also, being a D60, the earthwire isn't central on the tower peak.

 

The line is perfectly straight at this point, so my guess is that it's because of the steep slope to the south; a suspension tower would suffer from uplift on the insulator strings. This is what D10's were invented for, but maybe something tougher was needed? And why L2 on an otherwise L8 line? I would imagine that you could do the same thing with an L8 D60 as the starting point, but I haven't a clue.

 

Interesting find though.

 

Ian

 

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Bad sun! Bad!

 

Tried to get a shot of two jets and their contrails crossing behind a PL1a D60, and although I timed the shot a bit late, I ended up with the sun encroaching on it!

 

 

A rare example of SWE PL16 D2 (at the Bricket Wood end of Chequers Lane, Herts) — mostly I see the “Scottish” D2 type on my walks. The public footpath map indicates that there is no way to get close to either of them. North of there it’s PL1a and eventually L4, while south it’s PL1a interspersed with L4, terminating at a PL16 DT (the DT is a changeover point between PL1a and PL16.)

 

Edited September 25, 2022 by Daniel Beardsmore
Typo :°(

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I’ve been wondering why some pylons are decorated like Pinhead from Hellraiser, such as the above PL1a D60:

 

 

In The Pylon Men you can see that the posts that go all the way up can be used for climbing: some fellow can be seen ascending a pylon without any safety technique.

 

Here is a video showing a safer (and slower) technique on a radio tower, but I am still glad it’s them and not me attempting this (wide angle lens or otherwise)!

 

 

Trying to put all your weight on slippery cylindrical posts seems like madness to me!

[Ian McAulay]

The climbing aids are called "step bolts" (reasonably enough). They are usually (but not always) on two diagonally opposite corners of the tower, and on both faces of the steel angle that forms the corner,  and staggered so they work like a minimal ladder. They usually (but again, not always) start just above the anti-climbing barbed wire to discourage illicit adventurers.

 

Ian

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Ah, thanks.

 

Hm, considering that you replied, I am no longer talking to myself again in here, so I will add a couple more photos of a PL16 D30 in Chequers Lane, Bricket Wood, only, taking into account all the discrepancies, I figure this is a lone PL4 D30. (This is one tower south of the two SWE PL16 D2 towers, one of which is posted above, on a PL1a line.)

 

Another one that is out of reach of a clear photo!

 

[Daniel Beardsmore]

What’s the deal with Elstree–Sundon 132 kV? The Redbourn to Pepperstock section was de-energised years ago, leaving the two spurs as separate lines: Elstree Substation to Piccotts End¹ in Hemel Hempstead via Bushey Mill Substation in Watford, and Sundon Substation to Luton South Substation.

 

There are few anomalies on this supposedly PL1a line (beyond those that I have already mentioned here before, like the unexplained L7 DT at Redbourn used as a through tower and now disconnected):

 

The Sundon to Luton portion goes underground near Sundon Park via an L8 DT SEP. The Open Infrastructure Map shows what appears to be the corresponding termination point within the grounds of Sundon Substation, but there is nothing there now (satellite imagery suggests that a tower may have been removed). Is this line still energised?

 

The Open Infrastructure Map shows the spur from Redbourn to Piccotts End as “Elstree-Sundon”. Which is fine. At Piccotts End, there is another line coming in from the west, “Watford South to Elstree”. This takes you to another unnamed site in Lye Green, outside Chesham. The 132 kV line resumes, but now it’s called “Watford - Piccotts End”.

 

Only a blunderbus tour would go from Watford to Elstree by way of Rickmansworth, Chesham, Hemel Hempstead, Bricket Wood (where you find that PL4 above) and Garston! Why on earth is the line from Piccotts End to Lye Green called “Watford South to Elstree”?

 

Was Watford South to Elstree constructed as some kind of additional capacity to supplement the existing 275 kV line between Watford and Elstree? If so, how comes the section from Chesham to Piccotts End is actually called “Watford - Piccotts End”?

 

Anyone know the history of this entangled collection of lines?

 

¹ The Open Infrastructure Map does not show the name of that site.