The masts seem to have isolating switches on the horizontal arms, the rods coming down to ground level to operating levers. There must be a neutral section close by and these will be the section isolators.
That’s the sort of thing that appears to allow isolation and/or reconfiguration. Note the devices on the mast. They are switches operated by the vertical rods below, a bit like those in rural areas on the public distribution network. The masts are taller than usual when it is necessary to carry power over to the line (or lines) on the other side of the track while maintaining clearances with respect to other wiring such as the catenary and contact wire...
Thanks for this and the above replies, yes it was a little way west of Stoke Gifford Jn, which struck me as odd as the electrification towards Filton bank has supposedly been paused. The embankment in this area has been reprofiled, which meant that the route from platform 1 towards Filton bank was taken out of use not long after Chris Grayling officially opened it in January. This severely reduced its usefulness as there is no other signalled route towards Filton bank available from platform 1. This also delayed the completion of the headshunt from Stoke Gifford Yard. Now everything appears to be complete in that regard, and you can see both of these lines on the photo.
Just to confirm - are all the earth wires up on both sides of the line between Cocklebury Rd & Wootton Bassett Jct? I know the ATF wires are fairly sporadic, and the C&C is about 70% complete on the Up line (from your observations), and indeed I seem to recall you mentioning that all the earths were up earlier on this thread - but the "2 miles of nothing" rather threw me, I have to admit!
Earth wires appear to be complete, apologies for the confusion.
I am sure this is a section point where a section of live wire can be turned off and isolated and not a feeder point. It is controlled remotely from a central control room. If I am wrong I will be corrected.
To clarify this, catenary and contact wire are in place as far as a point between the old station at Winterbourne and the viaduct west of it. This applies to the down line, but I imagine the up line is the same.
So does that mean that the line will go electric ahead of schedule?
Very unlikely. Timetable will change in Jan, though they might 'soft' launch services like they did with Didcot-Maidenhead.
To be fair I was only commenting on the status, not expressing an opinion, but to be honest given this section is not supposed to be going live until after Cardiff I'm surprised that any of it has been done yet, however as it's virtually finished now, maybe it will be live sooner than originally planned.
Absolutely - apologies I wasn't suggesting you were being opinionated one way or the other. I just thought people might be interested in why the wires hadn't been isntalled.
....and also now some pics from Bedwyn of Claire Perry (local MP) having a look at the completed turnback extension.
Sorry, didn't mean to sound huffy, there's more than enough of that on here. My assumption on the ATF was simply that it was the least important and so was being done last. I realise you have inside knowledge which I'm sure we're all grateful you share and it's interesting to hear why the ATF may not be done on this section. As a project manager myself the sheer scale of activity to coordinate on this project must be vast and deciding which things can be dropped or done later to ensure the main delivery must be a real challenge. It would have been really interesting to have seen the plans.