Martin HoffmannHere’s a map! As there was a lot of waiting again today, a larger scale will work.
Good morning! Did you know there is a ferry from Pozzallo to Malta and it only takes an hour forty-five to cross? No that’s not the plan but it certainly is duly noted.
Pozzallo doesn’t have a ticket machine. Good thing ticket purchase through the Trenitalia app works quite well (only since August, if I understand the constant announcements correctly).
The next station announcement for Scicli is also in German but not in English. Did Baedeker like the place or something?
Quick change of plans. I wanted to take this train to Ragusa, but since Siracusa Depot hasn’t gotten the memo about Trenitalia’s new policy of keeping trains graffiti-free, I jumped off at Modica. From the map it looks like the section between Modica and Ragusa is the most scenic (with a helix and such), so should be worth re-rolling the dice.
But looks like this was my last ride on the Punk. Possibly for ever.
Palermo Centrale, where they have electrified the waiting area.
Stazione di fine giorno.
James Jefferies@partim blimey, I hope that's unpowered!
@jamesjefferies I think I see an insulator on the photo I have in the other direction, but I’ll try to remember and check tomorrow morning.
(The correct answer is, of course: it’s fine, it’s just 3000 volts.)
Garry Keenor@partim @jamesjefferies its permanently earthed - thats what those twin draped cables are doing. You can tell because they are bare conductors and strapped to the earthed horizontal tube
@25kV @jamesjefferies Ah, clever. What you also can see (better on the right) is that on either older or low-speed wiring, the drop wires are a loop slung over the catenary wire rather than mounted top and bottom. I guess the little wire boxes built under the catenary are so they don’t wander off when the catenary gets too steep.
(No, I haven’t been staring at overhead wires for too long.)
@partim @jamesjefferies sliding droppers are used where you're worried that the catenary wire and contact wire will expand/contract at different rates (being different materials), or when those two wires are anchored in different locations and so will have different rates of along track movement as they expand/contract. In modern well-designed auto tensioned systems they aren't really necessary
Schleifleistenbruch@25kV @partim @jamesjefferies I suspect the reason for the sliding droppers is the fact that the catenary/messenger wire of different tracks are linked by the cantilever mechanically and cannot really expand or contract freely