Telegraph and power lines

[buzz456]

All right one of you people that actually know what you are doing how do you do power lines and/or telegraph lines without spending forever when you are going around a curve or having your lines curved which looks dorky? Even if I start a new loft I end up with extra cross bars which look stupid also. Can someone help us out here?

[McCRRR19]

Among the assets that came with the Feather River and Clear Creek routes (and maybe a few other recent route releases) there is an object called "Telephone Pole one arm-Auto". It should be under the "clutter" catagory. It automatically puts wires between the telephone poles as you put them down, and keeps the lines straight if you're laying the poles out on a curve. It's not perfect however, if you have to move a pole the wires seem to stay where the pole originally was. Haven't played with it to much to figure out the nuances of it, but I believe it may be what you are looking for. So far these telephone poles are the only such assets I've found, but I'm sure if somebody figured out how to make it work, it could be done with other types of power and telephone lines.

[artimrj]

Don't use the parallel tool and they wont curve on you. You have to place straight segments by hand. Also the parallel tool will give you breaks in the same places that the tracks have breaks and It will give you a missing pole or it will give you two poles close together. This is with Michael's freeware poles.

[emdsd90mac]

I am going to get with Hack on this; the telegraph poles that he made for Tehachapi are done really well and don't give off the appearance of the curves and I think this may be due to the spacing of the poles that is set when the blueprint is made. Perhaps I'll have my first go at creating something like this for our little route.

[buzz456]

The RWA ones are interesting also.

[GreatNortherner]

Hi,

The gantry tool can be used to great effect to build realistic looking power lines (it's also what DTG are using on their more recent routes).

Wayne has posted a great tutorial here:
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=12632

Cheers
Michael