Which museums - and which transit operations - wire their overhead for both trolley pole and pantograph? I know of WRM, IRM and the San Francisco Muni.

National Capital Trolley Museum

PCC 1329 from The Hague sports a pantograph. Our other service cars use poles. In the past we also ran a car from Vienna, Austria that had a bow collector.



Wesley

In your neghborhood, VTA-San Jose uses trolley poles on its vintage cars. Only the section from the shop & yard area to and around the downtown loop is fixed tension and thus can be trolley pole compatible.

Sacremento also has trolley pole compatible overhead in the downtown area and a vintage car - bought from San Jose. I have not heard of any current plans to operate the car on a regular basis. It would be difficult to get it to and from their shop & yard as that section of wire is weight-tensioned and thus not trolley pole compatible without installing some form of slip joint which has to be fabricated from unobtanium.

The Green Line in Boston had trolley pole/pantograph operation for a number of years during the conversion from PCC cars to LRV's. It has been all pantograph for quite some time. Other systems including Shaker Heights, Pittsburgh, the Red Arrow division of SEPTA, and the Newark subway did a quick changeover, Some installed pantographs on older cars to facilitate this.

BTW - desigining and building trolley wire that is both trolley pole and pantograph compatible is something that should not be approached lightly - its a pain in the neck.

Orange Empire can run pantograph-equipped units but had not done so lately. Key System 167 (pan only) is sidelined with a bad motor, and SN 653 has been running with a trolley pole while the pan is rebuilt (SN used pans, third-rail shoes and trolley poles at various parts of their system). The trucks on 653 have noticeable "craters" from third-rail flashovers.

The new overhead in Sacramento leading to the Southern Pacific station has frogs for trolley poles at all the new turnouts. As I recall, when the San Jose car was used it was moved from the car barn to downtown powered by a towed a generator

I know this is a long distance answer, but the National Tramway Museum in Crich, England, has its overhead set up for both pole and bow collectors. Because they use swivel trolley heads, the wire doesn't have to follow traditional alignment methods as practiced here in the US. All of their trolley frogs have pan/bow deflectors to push the pans down and prevent them from snagging in the trolley wire.

When I helped with the installation of the trolley pole reverser at Glory Mine, we installed bow deflectors on the approach frog so that cars would operate as needed through the reversing loop.

Modern overhead systems designed for pantograph operation typically use airbreak arrangements for sectionalizing the overhead. As mentioned by Art Schwartz, trolley poles don't like to travel across discreet breaks in the wire, much less wire intersections at turnouts - these use wire bridges which would de-wire a pole very quickly.

Dave Crow

TAN: Back in trolley pole days, Shaker Heights Rapid Transit let Cleveland Rapid Transit trains with pantographs use some of their line. Shaker Heights trolley fan trips on Cleveland Rapid Transit tracks did require manual handling of the pole ropes at the points Dave mentions.
Chicago Rapid Transit had 2 steeple cab switchers built with a pole and a pantograph. I don't know if there was any overlap in their use.