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Week 4 (June 26-30)

The process of renovating the rails continued into the beginning of this week.  However, plans had to be change.  Keeping the original design of overlapping the rails would save time, but it is not the best solution to the problem.  Overlapping copper rails according to the direction of the movement of the collector shoes would still be too rough for the collector shoes to glide through each joint.  Having the collector shoes glide from a higher copper rail to a lower rail meant that the collector shoe would have to face an abrupt drop at each joint.  This unnecessarily enhances the wear and tear on the copper collector shoe and the wayside power rails.  A new design for the wayside power rails is to make a diagonal cut at each end of the copper rails and also drill one hold at each end for screws.  A model of the new design is shown in Figure 1.  The ends of two sections of copper rail would fit together like a puzzle piece.  The purpose of the diagonal cut is to decrease the amount of gap that the collector shoe has to come in contact with at any given moment when it glides through a joint.  There will be no more overlapping of the rails.  A small rectangular piece of copper is placed under the joint to connect the rails together and ensure electricity can flow through.  The PVC pipe will be carved to prevent the rectagular copper piece from creating a bump on the face of the copper rail.


Figure 1:  Improved rail design. (Drawn by Tan Ho)

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