Western Railroad Discussion > .

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/19/20 22:50 by F40PHR231.

I wonder why it is not direct bury.

F40PHR231 Wrote:
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> Pole lines aren't going away entirely, as shown in
> these photos taken this week from on board Amtrak
> train 6. This new installation near Radium and
> Bond on the Moffat Route in Colorado won't have
> the traditional railroad-style cross piece with
> insulators, but rather two insulated wires wrapped
> along steel cabling. Future generations will still
> get to experience the frustration of poles
> spontaneously showing up in the middle of their
> photo frame!


Hey! How would they ever know "How it was.." back then?

nm2320 Wrote:
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> I wonder why it is not direct bury.

Most likely commercial AC power which would be expensive to bury.

I saw those three private varnish cars on the westbound move through Galesburg last Saturday.

Looks like a pole with a loose strand clamp already installed, and a ground whisker sitting about 12 inches above the top. If it was going to be juice, they would have installed a cross arm of some sort. Looks like it is going to be strand and cable (lashed) or figure 8 cable.



Nudge

>If it was going to be juice, they would have installed a cross arm of some sort.

Crossarms are pretty much passe in the US.

to nm2320 and others, Have your tried burying ROCK? wag216

Also, could it be not even rail related, some entity leasing the space on the right of way?

 

First I have heard that about cross arms. They are mandatory in order to keep height clearances between power and comm lines. What you must be thinking about is open wire, signal & comm lines. SP used to run their own 110 volt down the line in some places on the signal side, to operate trickle chargers on signals. Where they got into trouble was was when they ran 7,200 volts on the same pole as signal. (This was to operate electric switch heaters and chargers.) A lot of states fined them and ordered them separated by so many feet. Also some of the code lines were moved to the same pole and cross arms when they tore out their comm line side.



Nudge

Cross arms are rare in new communications construction with cable; however, crossarms remain common in power line construction. You will see some "armless" construction using horizontal insulators mounted directly on the pole.

BCHellman Wrote:
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> nm2320 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I wonder why it is not direct bury.
>
> Most likely commercial AC power which would be
> expensive to bury.

Any bury is more expensive than poles that's why very few power lines even in town are not done.

I still think burying would be cheaper in the long run. Pole maintentence, tree trimming and repairs after storms and accidents eat up a lot of money. Never mind the visual pollution.

Posted from Android

> First I have heard that about cross arms. They are mandatory in order to keep height clearances between power and comm lines.

What is "mandatory" is the minimum spacing distances between conductors, and the distances depend on the voltages involved, but it isn't required to use crossarms to accomplish this. When was the last time you saw crossarms installed specifically for comm lines, such as a telephone cable? About two years ago, AT&T replaced the cable on the pole line in front of my house, and they attached the cable directly to the pole, not a crossarm, and the topmost circuit on the pole is 12kv (12,000 volts).

>What you must be thinking about is open wire, signal & comm lines. SP used to run their own 110 volt down the line in some places on the signal side, to operate trickle chargers on signals.

I've seen this over Donner and Grass Lake, two black wires twisted with a bare neutral, usually attached to the underside of the 10-pin arm. Keep in mind that with single-user poles, the rules are a bit less stringent than they would be for joint use poles.

>Where they got into trouble was was when they ran 7,200 volts on the same pole as signal. (This was to operate electric switch heaters and chargers.) A lot of states fined them and ordered them separated by so many feet.

This is the distance separation thing. It's quite OK to run 7.2 kv on the same pole as signal lines, etc. provided the spacing is proper, which is doubtful when attempted on the same crossarm with the signal lines (also has to do with how far a man can reach). While fundamentally similar, the requirements do vary from state to state.

> Also some of the code lines were moved to the same pole and cross arms when they tore out their comm line side.

In all my travels on the SP over the years between KFS and SBA, OAK and Lovelock NV, I've never seen the SP do one single thing about rearranging its line and comm wires on the 10-pin crossarms (with the possible exception of letting the whole shebang rot and fall apart, even while still being used). If you look at older pix of the SP, there is usually a pole line with lots of 10-pin crossarms with lots of wires. These were WUT poles and circuits (Western Union Telegraph Co), not SP signal and comm lines, and they pretty much went away by 1980.

>Any bury is more expensive than poles that's why very few power lines even in town are not done.

It is, and one of the big reasons it doesn't get done is that the customers who desire to change to UG have to bear the cost of connections between their meter and the underground vault in the street and pay prorated costs of digging the trench in the street for the distribution circuits, based on how much their property fronts on the street. Undergrounding in new subdivisions is much cheaper and quite frequently done (paid for by the developer, who recovers the costs prorated in each home's purchase price).

power going to a slide fence?