Catenary masterclass
Model Rail’s modelling livewire Peter Marriott recounts the history of electrified railways.
Rail electrification always seems to be in the news. It’s considered to be a vital part of reducing the country’s carbon emissions but it’s also expensive. This leads to political parties and all manner of local interest groups take pot shots at each other when schemes are proposed, cancelled or delayed. And that’s before we get on to the subject of bad weather bringing the wires down.
You would be forgiven for thinking that using electricity to power the railways is a relatively new thing. Yet the first electric train, designed by German engineer Werner von Siemens, ran on May 31 1879, a mere 50 years after the Rainhill Trials when Robert Stephenson had shown the world what the ideal steam locomotive looked like.
Britain’s first electric railway, the Volks Electric Railway, opened in 1883, while the first electrically powered deep-level railway under London followed in 1890. These systems transferred current via electrified rails and pick-up shoes on the trains. Of course, London Underground still uses the fourth-rail system to this day.
A trial in Edinburgh in 1890 proved that Britain’s blossoming electric tramways could be powered by an overhead wire. The first full tram system to use an overhead wire opened in Leeds the following year. Britain’s railway companies finally caught on to the benefits that electricity could bring in the early years of the 20th century. The Mersey Railway was electrified in 1903 and the Lancashire & ”inaugurated Yorkshire Railway Britain’s first electrified suburban passenger service from Liverpool to Southport in March 1904. The North Eastern Railway unveiled its newly electrified Tyneside
The first electric train ran on May 31 1879, a mere 50 years after the Rainhill Trials
service a week later. What set this scheme apart was part of it featured overhead wires, a first on Britain’s main line railway system.
It was British Railways that implemented widescale adoption of overhead catenary in the UK. It pushed through several ‘Big Four’ electrification schemes that had been thwarted by the Second World War, such as the Woodhead Route and the Great Eastern Main Line, and initially adopted 1,500V DC.
BR’S most ambitious electrification scheme was the West Coast Main Line. It was first mooted in the 1955 Modernisation Plan and work started in 1959. As a result, BR adopted 25kv AC as its standard system. All subsequent electrification schemes, including the East Coast Main Line, the Great Western Main Line and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link have all used 25kv AC overhead power.
Modelling a railway with overhead line equipment adds another complexity to the layout building process, despite the key routes that have been electrified. Couple that with the difficulties of finding, not to mention erecting, scale British-outline catenary and it’s probably fair to say that most modellers would opt for the relative simplicity of the pre-electrification era.
Thankfully, that situation has now changed and there are a handful of 4mm:1ft scale British-outline catenary products on the market that not only look good but are easy to install. And with an increasing number of superb overhead electric locomotives and multiple units on the market, there’s never been a better time to electrify your railway.