1:72 Telegraph poles 3pcs

Wooden poles along every road

Wooden poles with crossarms and porcelain insulators lined roads and railway lines from the end of the nineteenth century and in many countries they lasted until underground lines replaced them. For modelers they are interesting precisely because their form has practically not changed for whole decades, so the same element will serve a view from the First World War as well as a scene from the 1950s.

In combat views they moreover carry a significance of their own. Retreating units felled the lines in order to deny the enemy communication, so a toppled or snapped pole with hanging wires is among the most eloquent details of a devastated landscape. Even an undamaged pole, though, fulfills a task that nothing else will stand in for: it gives a view a scale, because the viewer judges its height from experience. A horizontal scene without a single tall element comes across as flattened and the viewer cannot judge the size of the equipment in it.

Building recommendation

Three pieces in the package make it possible to suggest the direction of a line into the distance, which is brought out by standing the poles in a slightly converging row. The wires are imitated with stretched sprue, which is glued on and the surplus burned off with heat. The wood is painted with a gray-brown base and the lengthwise texture is brought out with a dry brush, while the feet are darkened at the ground. The diorama part of the maker's range keeps to small elements of the landscape and the street, by which a finished model is set into surroundings. This narrow specialization is characteristic of the whole range.