Please help me. I have a load of old marklin catenary (actually, it is all brand new as I have never used it since I bought it in the 80's). Looking at the Marklin catalog of the day, it says that on a standard 5100 semi-circle, I should have 5 masts equally spaced with 4 * 7018 lengths of wire connecting them together. I have tried this and when I gently push an electric loco along the track, the pantographs pop up because the wires are way off centre at the middle of each wire [:(] What am I doing wrong? There does not seem to be sufficient length on the wires to bend them into position. If I build a complete 5100 loop and connect the wires onto the masts, it looks like the whole construction is about to collapse inwards [:0] Do I actually need an extra adjustment piece to introduce a bit of 'slack'? Also, what is the exact configuration for a 5200 circle? Thanks in advance. Sorry if it seems a bit of a daft question, [:I] but I have tried it according to the Marklin catalog and it does not work!!

Thanks Ian. Were you using the configuration I specified? I shall brush up on Wintrack. Good luck at Santa Pod. Alan

i would agree with Ian,you have to bend the catenary wires to the curvature of the track and position the masts carefully so that there is no tension.

Hi Alan,

having a look at the Marklin 0354 layouts catalog, I see that for 6x5100 track pieces, 4x7018 catenary pieces and 5x7009 masts are needed, BUT if the 1st mast is on the edge of the 1st track, the 5th mast is NOT on the edge of the 6th track (and the 3rd mast is NOT on the edge between 3rd and 4th tracks.
Of course you have to bend the catenary elements and compensate for length differences in the straight parts of the layout.
Let me know if you would like to receive by e-mail scans of the 2 pages of the a.m. catalog showing different tracks and catenary configurations (unfortunately not for 5200 tracks, but if I send you the proper track layout, you have all the tracks, accessories and catenary parts listed).

Bye

Renato