Pylons .

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Here is another one, this time L4(m):

 

 

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Strange …

 

 

This is on the 33 kV WSC line from Willoughby Substation 132 kV:

 

https://openinframap.org/#15.66/52.825456/-1.070075

 

Hideous towers, but note that they are rated well above 33 kV. Possibly designed for 132 kV, but I am not sure — maybe a voltage in between 66 and 132.

 

(The photo was taken at Rempstone Steam Fair in 2018 but presently there is no line anywhere near Rempstone. Line WSC is something like 5 km east of Rempstone!)

[pharrc20]

2 hours ago, Daniel Beardsmore said:

Strange …

 

 

This is on the 33 kV WSC line from Willoughby Substation 132 kV:

 

https://openinframap.org/#15.66/52.825456/-1.070075

 

Hideous towers, but note that they are rated well above 33 kV. Possibly designed for 132 kV, but I am not sure — maybe a voltage in between 66 and 132.

 

(The photo was taken at Rempstone Steam Fair in 2018 but presently there is no line anywhere near Rempstone. Line WSC is something like 5 km east of Rempstone!)

I've seen these in passing, there is or was a line that runs up the Erewash valley and crosses the railway line between Clay Cross and Toton at least once maybe twice I can't remember now but possibly originated from Spondon power station. No idea of tower designation but only a handful of lines known to use this tower type in the North East Midlands. I've seen them referred to as Christmas tree towers in reference to the shape of the towers.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

33 kV? 66 kV? 132 kV?

 

[pharrc20]

3 minutes ago, Daniel Beardsmore said:

33 kV? 66 kV? 132 kV?

 

33 and 132 definitely not sure if any operating on 66 kV.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

OK, so this may be one of the PL2/PL3/PL5/PL9/PL10/PL15 types awaiting formal identification. Southeast England’s almost-Milliken towers might even just be PL1, just a different flavour.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

22 hours ago, pharrc20 said:

I've seen these in passing, there is or was a line that runs up the Erewash valley and crosses the railway line between Clay Cross and Toton at least once maybe twice I can't remember now but possibly originated from Spondon power station. No idea of tower designation but only a handful of lines known to use this tower type in the North East Midlands. I've seen them referred to as Christmas tree towers in reference to the shape of the towers.

 

The line running northeast from Spondon uses them.

 

The line from Chesterfield to Alfredon uses a variation. This variation has a pyramid peak very similar to PL1a, while the “Christmas Tree” type has a taller peak to which the double earthwire crossarms can be attached.

 

The dead giveaway versus PL1a is the equal clearance crossarms, in the manner of L2, the only British 132 kV tower type that I have seen with that characteristic.

 

Both examples are given as 132 kV.

 

Single earthwire only type:

 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.1684076,-1.3853512,3a,15y,173.75h,92.16t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sjVV8e0pF34nHESs7sZwG5w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

 

The angle towers of the latter have a little pyramid peak in Eve L16 style.

[pharrc20]

42 minutes ago, Daniel Beardsmore said:

 

The line running northeast from Spondon uses them.

 

The line from Chesterfield to Alfredon uses a variation. This variation has a pyramid peak very similar to PL1a, while the “Christmas Tree” type has a taller peak to which the double earthwire crossarms can be attached.

 

The dead giveaway versus PL1a is the equal clearance crossarms, in the manner of L2, the only British 132 kV tower type that I have seen with that characteristic.

 

Both examples are given as 132 kV.

 

Single earthwire only type:

 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.1684076,-1.3853512,3a,15y,173.75h,92.16t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sjVV8e0pF34nHESs7sZwG5w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

 

The angle towers of the latter have a little pyramid peak in Eve L16 style.

Yep, they are odd towers indeed and seem to be local to that area as I don't recall seeing them anywhere else on my travels round on the railways.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

For keyboard switches I did have to resolve to a nomenclature for unidentified types, based on observable and probable characteristics (housing colour, plunger colour, sense type and keycap mount). Some types will never be identified, ever, such is the scope of a 60-year-old global industry.

 

For pylons, since we know that there is an enhanced tower bible, this would seem pointless, but I am in a limbo state, especially with the are-they-aren’t-they Eve L3/L3(c), pending a response from SSE and/or NG.

 

However, since all my drawings are to scale, it’s not great trying to produce totally preliminary drawings, as I don’t know the heights. Eve 0.175 for example I scaled to L16, but they might be PL16 size (smaller). Eve 275 kV I scaled to L66 clearances, but from 25kv’s measurements they come out exactly to the lesser L3 clearances. (I have not amended the drawings yet, because if I get the ID, I need to not only rename the page, the image directory and all the images, but also change their metadata, so I’m stuck until I can get some kind of ID. If SSE and NG both let me down, I guess I’ll just change the ID to Eve 275: the angle and terminal towers are obviously Eve, so I guess the line towers must also be.)

 

275 kV and above appear to be largely resolved. Someone at PAS did claim that L1 exists, but naturally, no other details were offered, and with all the claims I read there, no-one ever questioned or wanted more details, or they never came. There are some strange gaps in the Ls (L1, L5, L10, L11) that are unexplained. There are also two or more parallel numbering schemes. L2 is also L36, alongside L16, L34, L55, L66 and L132, which are likely not all be the same scheme. Some types seem to be known only from this system. No evidence yet indicates if L55 and L16 differ: L55 might be like SSE400 DL, which is the higher altitude version of D, with the same design but stronger bars (no way to tell without comparing the component plans).

 

It’s the 132 kV types that are still riddled with mysteries.

[pharrc20]

21 hours ago, Daniel Beardsmore said:

For keyboard switches I did have to resolve to a nomenclature for unidentified types, based on observable and probable characteristics (housing colour, plunger colour, sense type and keycap mount). Some types will never be identified, ever, such is the scope of a 60-year-old global industry.

 

For pylons, since we know that there is an enhanced tower bible, this would seem pointless, but I am in a limbo state, especially with the are-they-aren’t-they Eve L3/L3(c), pending a response from SSE and/or NG.

 

However, since all my drawings are to scale, it’s not great trying to produce totally preliminary drawings, as I don’t know the heights. Eve 0.175 for example I scaled to L16, but they might be PL16 size (smaller). Eve 275 kV I scaled to L66 clearances, but from 25kv’s measurements they come out exactly to the lesser L3 clearances. (I have not amended the drawings yet, because if I get the ID, I need to not only rename the page, the image directory and all the images, but also change their metadata, so I’m stuck until I can get some kind of ID. If SSE and NG both let me down, I guess I’ll just change the ID to Eve 275: the angle and terminal towers are obviously Eve, so I guess the line towers must also be.)

 

275 kV and above appear to be largely resolved. Someone at PAS did claim that L1 exists, but naturally, no other details were offered, and with all the claims I read there, no-one ever questioned or wanted more details, or they never came. There are some strange gaps in the Ls (L1, L5, L10, L11) that are unexplained. There are also two or more parallel numbering schemes. L2 is also L36, alongside L16, L34, L55, L66 and L132, which are likely not all be the same scheme. Some types seem to be known only from this system. No evidence yet indicates if L55 and L16 differ: L55 might be like SSE400 DL, which is the higher altitude version of D, with the same design but stronger bars (no way to tell without comparing the component plans).

 

It’s the 132 kV types that are still riddled with mysteries.

Yes, I have often wondered why there appears to be no L1, L5, L10, L11 type towers popping up in what little official paperwork and evidence appears. I too wonder what this extended Tower Bible contains and would certainly be interested in seeing a copy or at least a list of the designs that are covered if possible please.

 

Cheers Paul

[Daniel Beardsmore]

It’s curious that IC_225 mentioned PL2 and PL3 specifically, being the exact two that we already have incontrovertible proof that they exist — my suspicion is that there won’t really be much new, and that most mysteries will remain so. Why would National Grid even know about 132 kV any more? (Notwithstanding the knowledge regained from buying Western Power.)

 

My experience over the last 10 years (prior to entering the world of pylons) is that you never get all the answers at once: each big breakthrough is amazing but creates as many new questions as it answers and only scratches the surface of the big picture.

 

The real problem for me is the complete lack of any attempt to organise a photo catalogue of types: I cannot legally harvest Street View imagery and nor am I in a position to visit the entire of the UK.

 

I have now trawled all of the following Flickr pools:

 

https://www.flickr.com/groups/12443690@N00/ — Humming Giants, 3400 photos
https://www.flickr.com/groups/1421505@N25/ — Electricity Pylons, 4000 photos
https://www.flickr.com/groups/1105066@N22/ — Pylon Appreciation Club, 5700 photos

 

Out of all of that (discounting the non-UK material and considerable amount of duplication) there is very little of any interest. Eve 275 kV is absent entirely. There is not enough to make up all of PL2, PL3, PL5 and PL15 that I can see, and certainly not if PL9 and PL10 exist.

 

I avoid links to Google Maps for various reasons, and there is nothing else open to me. All the photos on Flickr are marked as copyright, so none are available to re-use.

 

As I said before, I am not interested in thumbs up. I am interested in progress, and thumbs up are beyond meaningless and just an irritation.

[dave55uk]

On 08/05/2023 at 20:31, Daniel Beardsmore said:

 

https://openinframap.org/#15.66/52.825456/-1.070075

 

 

Terrific map - thanks for the link.

 

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Anyone here answer to the name Frazer?

 

[SHMD]

Not me, nor have I seen anyone use it either.

 

 

Kev.

 

[pharrc20]

Well I asked the question over on the FB group around whether L1, L5, L10, L11 ever existed and the response I got from two different members, one a former linesman but current industry and the other unknown. Both said that L1 was I quote-

 

"L1 couldn't be used for towers, the spec had already been written and referred to LV poles." from Alan.

 

and

"I found a J. L. Eve foundation drawing from 1954 for an L5 tower - appears to be 132kV. So they obviously were designed if not used. I think I may have read somewhere that an L1 was a wooden pole design?" from Alastair. 

 

and

"Alistair Correct, L1 was LV wood poles." from Alan.

 

Alan the industry guy also said-

"PL series, they were Primary Line contracts in the early days of the grid and were numbered sequentially. I suspect that some designs were rejected in favour of others, that would explain the gaps. Then a few designs became 'adopted' in other areas, like the PL7 which became quite widespread. Eventually the PL16 became the favoured tower and still dominates our landscape today.
With fewer styles, manufacturing becomes easier, therefore cheaper. Maintenance stocks become smaller. Eventually it reaches a natural level."

 

Cheers Paul 

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I’ve moved my queries to the PAS forum, so that each query can have its own topic. Trying to track multiple outstanding matters here is madness. That site is dead, and so thus will be my queries. I did however add preliminary drawings today for L34 S10, S30 and S60. S30 is based on the bits that Pylon King deigned to permit us miserable plebs to see, reconstructed from Street View to get the rest. S10 and S60 are scaled to that. The line tower is S1 according to National Grid’s data, which is such a tiny angle it seems hardly worth it. I was not even to bother mentioning it at all, but since someone else has had a turn, I guess I can now. L34 might be in this new tower bible, but I will be a lot greyer before we are entitled to see that.

[25kV]

On 04/05/2023 at 14:43, Daniel Beardsmore said:

 

I can only draw towers that I can see from straight on, i.e. free from perspective. I can use upwards angles to fill in crossarm bracing and correct other mistakes, but not draw an entire tower.

 

I have more avenues to explore with SSEN so I might get somewhere yet with getting heights. However, my progress to date with industry organisations is limited and may amount to very little in the end.

 

Back on the Kintore-Beauly line - grabbed a couple more shots today as close to straight on as I could get for anyone interested!   (Standard towers only with/without extensions - haven't yet found a decent angle on the corner towers to get a straight-on view, but if I do... etc.)

http://25kv.uk/B2K/20230518 104734 P1970544.JPG
http://25kv.uk/B2K/20230518 110411 P1970548.JPG
 

 

 

[Daniel Beardsmore]

The crossarms look to be made from steel bars so thin you could snap them like a twig! (The second photo looks like it was oops’d in the editing!)

 

All I need now is a contact at NGED (FKA Western Power Distribution) to get the identity of the English ones (Bishop’s Wood to Ludlow). Sadly, what’s left of PAS has gone to Facebook, so that rules me out talking to all the folk who are left. I’ve not yet scaled my diagrams to match your measurements as I’m waiting for the ID from SSEN before I redo everything.

 

I had to check out what camera you have. 1″ sensor — had to be at least that. Still trying to figure out a good compact camera. (Within a sensible budget just for the last few pylon shots, since that is all I anticipate needing it for now. The Lumix TZ70 looked ideal: only 12 MP so you get better noise levels from the 1/2.3″ sensor, but it seems to be gone now. The 1″ models don’t have the nice 30–40× zoom of the other Lumices with the LVF … None of the 1/2.3″ models are exactly great, not like some of the amazing cameras that people here use, but they’re too bulky to slip into a pocket on 20-mile walks in case anything interesting turns up, like a walk a couple of months back where I just stumbled across my first PL16 DDT and great views of other DD types and had no camera with me at all.)

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Off topic I realise … I find it quite amazing the amount of subjects that are not explained properly. (One reason why I have tried to do a good job with pylons: to fill in the huge gap left standing for so many years.)

 

My understanding for decades is that magnification factors relate to area. This may be true for telescopes or loupes.

 

For cameras, no-one anywhere explains it properly. From what I can gather, you ignore the zoom figure and just compare the focal lengths. (The zoom size is just longest focal length divided by shortest.) My shagged old camera is 35.6–107 mm (3×), and the only comparable model on the market now is the Ixus 286 HS, 25–300 mm (12×). I thought that 12× zoom had 4 times the area of 3× zoom (12 ÷ 3 = 4) and thus double height double width at maximum telephoto. However, 300 mm ÷ 107 mm gives triple height triple width (pretty much what I really wanted). For a distant pylon, that’s quite a boost!

 

(Read any page on cameras and it’s all doubledutch. It’s like people go out of their way to make as little sense as possible.)

 

That means that a 720 mm camera (like a compact Lumix) will give a subject a staggering seven times as high …

[Daniel Beardsmore]

One more set of photos with my busted camera, for old time’s sake (although it did kind of behave itself today). Not sure I will ever buy another camera now — nothing left on the market. A few teaser shots. I spotted the PL16 DDT out walking in the distance back in February when I had no camera with me, on a completely random walk. I could see just the top of something shaped like a Blaw-Knox terminal tower, way off in the distance, with crossarms too closely spaced to be anything but a PL16 DDT, and found my way over to it.

 

I also found how to get to the one last L16 type I needed: D60. I retraced the whole walk in better weather to get my last two shots. (Whether I also go back to Bedford for PL7 towers, I don’t know; I doubt I’ll do either of the L3 locations now, not with this camera, and likely not with any other.)

 

Bonus shot of a 33 kV terminal pole.

 

 

 

 

 

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Something I forgot to add: I find it interesting that PL16 and L16 terminal towers have wide entry angles. Supergrid terminal towers seem to all have an entry angle range of 0–5° unless otherwise specified, while PL16 and L16 seem to allow 45° or more. (L2 has a separate DT45 used for this, and L3 has DTV 45° that … has a 5° entry angle limit … no-one seems to know what the 45° angle means there.)

 

In this case there are also extra components needed for off-side termination, presumably at an angle lower than 90° otherwise a DDT90 would have been used.

 

L4 and L7 however follow the later practice (as used by BICC L6 and possibly the rest of L6) of requiring a DJT for 45° termination; in all three cases, the DT again has a 5° entry angle limit. (L4 and L7 per the spec, that to be safe, I have chosen not to make public, as I did not get an answer on that.)

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I take it that there’s no sign of this enhanced tower bible yet?

[Suzie]

I am often puzzled by this short run of pylons in Colchester, probably about half a mile from the substation (close to the former power station site) to where it goes underground. It starts at the 132KV substation with five insulators.

 

Then in the middle of the run goes down to four insulators

 

 

And at the end only has three insulators.

 

 

Is the current so high that the voltage drops from 55kV at the start to 33kV at the end?

 

I suspect these structures date back to the 1930s because there are similar structures nearby that appear to have been built to take a section under an airfield built during the war.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Open Infrastructure Map gives it as route PYF “Colchester–Mersey Road”, towers PYF1 to PYF5, shown as 33 kV double circuit: https://openinframap.org/#15.76/51.875311/0.930637

 

Although counting the insulator discs is a helpful guide, there are always oddities. A lot of terminal and angle wood poles on 11 kV have 2-disc strings instead of single discs, for no clear reason. Tension and suspension insulator strings/sets seem to always differ in the count of discs on towers, and the disc shapes seem to differ too: more discs and more densely packed discs for suspension towers.

 

This is a mystery for an engineer!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Curiously, I have mysteriously come to have a certain document in my posession regarding some well-known, ubiquitous tower types, and it’s noted that suspension insulator sets are to be the anti-fog type (55 inches minimum length), and tension sets the standard type (and 56 inch minimum length). This was already my theory having learnt about anti-fog discs the other day. That would seem to be why the disc count differs between suspension and tension insulator sets on 132 kV towers. “Low-duty tension (for use between terminal towers and sub-stations)” is also stated to be 55 inch anti-fog, which is what you see for example at the Eve DT in St Albans.

 

In general, a couple of other tidbits. DX is proven to be double-circuit transposition. Double-earthwire single circuit is SS, e.g. SS2, SS10 etc (rare). SX is single-circuit transposition, something yet to be seen anywhere.