Catenary Poles for Wassen's upper level

Ta daaaaaa....  

Looking more complete (the white bits in the scenery are glue that hasn't dried yet)

The upper level at Wassen is looking tidier with the backdrop in place, and now some overhead support masts have been added to insert some detail into the scene.

As I'd done for the lower/Wattinger/Reuss level bits that have been scenicked, I built the overhead support poles for the top level from brass. Posts being made from rod,  bases of thin shim and all soldered together.

The base means you have something to glue down and to scenic around, but the solder joint and brass makes the thing reasonably impervious to breakage from knocks (while cleaning the track and so forth). Plus you can bend the joint within reason to get the posts to be vertical once everything has set. I have yet to be tempted to append detailed arms off these as that might make track cleaning a nightmare, but we shall see if I change my mind over time. At least having the vertical poles gives an impression of the overhead and its all a bit more subtle than the chunky Marklin offerings.

As to building them...

Not being able to find H section brass in a small size during recent travels, I went with a C shape that I picked up in the Whistle Stop in Pasadena. I like the shaped channel rather than using a 'plain' square rod to add a little more intricacy to the setup, and as it is only visible from the front of the layout, it doesn't matter that it isn't an H shape . The C it is a little smaller in cross section than the H used on the lower level. I also made them a little shorter to enforce a look of forced perspective as you look into the layout.

The grey one in the pic above is a leftover from the lower level so you might note the subtle difference in size that looks quite good now that these are installed. The posts were nipped to length wth side cutters and filed square-ish:

Posts and bases were wiped with flux, tinned...

And attached together with some heat from Mr Soldering Iron (it is hard to remember to take these pics while building, and with only two hands at my disposal):

The assemblies were painted with a grey primer that works well enough as a final colour for me.

The brass bases of these were contact-glued on to existing tiny plastic squares on the layout which were installed some time ago. This way, ballast could be laid around the squares before the poles went up, yet leaving a small patch of flat level surface to glue the poles to later.