Thread by @25kV

THREAD: Nice sunny day, so off to the garden centre. What's that you say? The UK's only open air section of Rigid Overhead Conductor Bar is just down the road, between Patchway Old and Short Tunnels? Oh go on then.

You might be wondering why it has been done like this. Both tunnels are too low / arch too cramped to fit conventional OLE, So ROCS is used instead. Normally you would transition back to conventional OLE outside the portal. But here the distance between portals is too short.

By the time you got back to conventional, its time to transition again. No point in doing that. So the only real option is to continue the ROCS in open air.

One major downside of ROCS is its weight - it needs supporting every 12 metres to stop it sagging. Hence the sea of masts.

I've had this location on my hitlist for a while - just waiting for a sunny day and an excuse. It took a few bramble scars to get these photos, access at the Old Tunnel end is tricky!

You aren't actually look at the bar - it has a plastic cover which is normally fitted in wet tunnels to protect the aluminium bar from corrosion by contaminants. Not sure why its been used here.

For similar reasons, this is also one of the few places in the UK with an aerial insulated Auto Transformer Feeder (ATF) cable - see if you can spot it

If you want to know more about the history of this rather odd configuration of tunnels, go to en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patchway_…

(I should note that there are a number of garden centres closer to us than this one. But they Lack Tunnels. Today has been a bit @MrTimDunn ish)