I have a traction guidebook that states catenary poles should be spaced not less than 90' nor more than 110' apart. That comes out to about 13-1/4" apart in HO scale. I have seen pole spacing on large commercial layouts to way exceed that dimension, what looks like 3 passenger car lengths judging by cab ride videos. Does 110' (13-1/4") sound reasonable? I have 30 sections of cat, 13-1/4" long made right now, but I can easily make some longer ones if justified.

I made up a test track 6' long with the catenary I made and it works perfectly. My catenary wires are very robust and will stand up not like the wires you see on videos where the wires are all bent and falling apart. It may not look prototypical, but scale concessions need to be made when necessary. A contact wire if scaled down would be approximately .0057" diameter: totally unworkable in the model world.

I'm constructing some catenary wires 23" long. That is so I can get 2 pieces from a 48" long wire.

My Sommerfeldt wires are max. 500mm on straight tracks.

Edited by user 20 January 2022 10:53:24(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

For the straight track i use 400 mm between the mast.
For the curve minimum at 700 mm i use about 300 mm between the mast.
In narrower curve for example in the tunnel i never use catenary.
I use only catenary visible on the layout.
I never feed the power to the catenary because i feed power to the tracks instead.