Building

The arms of the masts and the contact wire itself you make from metal wire. That is sturdier than printed, and it conducts, if your overhead line is to carry current. The jigs are printed with the masts and by the soldering-jig plugin, so every piece gets exactly the length and the bend your layout needs.

What you need

• Brass or phosphor-bronze wire of the thickness on the jig. For a mast's arms that is 0.7 mm in H0 by default, 0.6 in TT, 0.5 in N and 0.4 in Z.
• A soldering iron with a fine tip, preferably with an adjustable temperature (around 320 °C).
• Thin solder, and flux for electronics or for brass.
• Fine pliers, side cutters and a small file.
• Clothes pegs or small clamps to hold the wire on the jig.

How to go about it

1. Cut the wire a little longer than the piece you need, and straighten it by pulling it between two fingers or over the edge of a table.

2. Lay the wire in the jig's groove and hold it with a clamp.

3. Bend the wire along the jig where the jig has a bend. Bend it in one go: wire that is bent back and forth breaks.

4. Lay the cross wires and the droppers in their grooves.

5. Put a little flux on every spot where two wires touch.

6. Hold the iron against the joint for a moment, then add a very little solder. Let the solder flow and take the iron away. A good joint is small and shiny.

7. Let it all cool down before you take it off the jig. Clean off the flux with a little alcohol.

8. File away any solder that sticks out. Nothing may stick out under the contact wire, or the pantograph catches on it.

TRAX3D has already worked out where every mast goes on your layout. In your building plan the overhead line has a drawing of its own, per level, with every mast and its number. Print that drawing at full size and use it as a template on your layout.

The masts

1. Lay the drawing on your layout, or mark the spots through it with an awl or a pencil.

2. Drill a hole through the baseboard at every mast. Under the foot there is a tapped hole (M2, in N and Z M1.6): fix the mast from below with a small screw. If you chose a printed pin in the plugin, drill a hole the thickness of that pin.

3. Set the mast upright, with a square beside it. On a curve the arm points to the outside of the curve.

4. Glue the mast in place. Use superglue for resin and metal; for a mast you may want to move later, a drop of glue you can undo, such as white wood glue.

5. Put the portals in last: they hang over the tracks and are otherwise in the way while you build.

The contact wire

1. Hang the pieces of contact wire in the arms in order, from one end of a track to the other.

2. Let the contact wire zigzag as the drawing shows: by turns a little left and a little right of the track's middle. That is how a real train's pantograph wears evenly, and how it looks.

3. Do not pull the wire too tight. A contact wire that is too tight pulls the masts crooked; one that hangs too slack lets the pantograph go.

4. Run a locomotive with its pantograph raised slowly under the whole overhead line. Where the pantograph catches or pushes the wire up, bend the wire a little.