SEE PL7

Contents

• Overview
  • General data
• Can be confused with
• Lines
• Tower forms
• Tower details
  • Examples
• Examples
  • Bedford
• See also

Overview

SEE PL7 is a South East England (SEE) scheme. This scheme uses a suite of Watshams towers that were conceivably designed for it specifically. The majority of examples depicted on Flickr are indicated to be within the SEE region, although one D2 tower in shown to be in Sheffield, putting it within the MEE (Mid East England) region.

Several PL7 drawings are annotated to indicate that the same tower type was used in other schemes. So far the data is inconclusive as very few drawings have been recovered.

Separate table due to the lengths of the scheme names:

General data

Note that no height options were given for D10 or DT. For DDT and DDT90 only E10 and E20 are known, but the far right of the chart is cut off at E20 and thus E30 may have also been present.

Can be confused with

• L16/L55 (D2)
• PL16 (DD2)
• Eve 0.175 (D2, DD2)

Lines

Lines confirmed so far:

• Route PHA: Cut Throat Lane Switching Station to Austin Cannon Substation, Bedford; this 11-tower line is all double earthwire
• Carrington Substation (on the west edge of Manchester) to Crewe Substation. The Crewe end is double earthwire although the line terminates on a PL16 DDT90. At the Carrington end the line appears to have been remodelled as it finishes up on PL16 towers, all single earthwire. A short spur of “PL7” double earthwire towers connects the line to Knutsford Substation. Near Middlewich Power Generation Plant a short PL16 line tees off to Elworth Substation. There is also a junction south of Lach Dennis to an Eve 0.4 line to Lostock Substation outside Lostock Gralam, with its own junction to an L4(m) line to Lostock Works Anaerobic Digestion Plant.

Other lines exist.

Tower forms

D90 and DD90 are omitted from the Tower Bible but such towers appear to have been constructed. A tower likely to be DD90 previously existed in Slough and a tower likely to be D90 can be found in Severn Way, Hunslet Trading Estate, Leeds.

There are also DT and DDT towers with extended top crossarms (here, “ETC” for short) for use with vertical downleads, of unknown designation:

These extended top crossarm terminal towers can be seen at the substation in Crawley, West Sussex, England (51.115° N 0.163° W).

PL7 line towers have an interesting design of middle and bottom crossarm. The rakers (top bars) merge part-way along the width of the crossarm and continue as a back-to-back double bar from there to the tip:

Tower details

Crossarm width is the total width across the widest crossarm.

Examples

Examples

Bedford

A short line of 11 PL7 towers, route PHA, runs from Cut Throat Lane Switching Station to Austin Cannon Substation, Bedford. Starting at Austin Cannon Substation on DDT tower PHA1, the line line crosses the River Great Ouse on two DD60 towers then goes north to Cut Throat Lane Switching Station. Being a short route, all of the towers are double earthwire.

From there, the line transitions to L4(m) briefly (three towers), then two PL4 DD2 double earthwire towers, before terminating on an L7(c) DJT in Manton Industrial Estate.

The photographs were all taken on 2nd September 2023.

See also

• PL7 D10 and D2, Sussex (Flickr)
• PL7 D2, Sussex (Flickr)
• PL7 D2, Sheffield (Flickr)
• PL7 D2 wired single-circuit, Hampshire (Flickr)
• PL7 D2, unknown location (Flickr)
• PL7 D10, Sussex (Flickr)