When good trains go bad: Pantograph edition


Today’s question is about pantographs.

presumably from Russia.

Why don’t pantographs wear out or break?

Oh they do.




Carbon shoe dust





How can you tell something broke?





5 responses to “When good trains go bad: Pantograph edition

  1. I highly doubt it, but just to entertain the thought, do our trains have batteries? If they do, how do they work?

    I would assume that since the power in the train goes out when the pantograph breaks or goes down, any battery the trains may have don’t work in the same way, as say, a car battery works.


    • Actually they do – there is a low voltage power supply of 25 rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries, which theoretically can power low-voltage systems in the train for about an hour (emergency lighting, pantograph raising/lowering, power for the brakes and doors, the coupler motors, etc) though in practice it’s probably closer to 20 minutes.

  2. I would place a bet that this was NOT done as a destructive test, but rather a test for the alignment of the catenary. TriMet does this when they open a new line, generally with a type 1 and 2 car towed by the BIG Unimog. The camera caught the disastrous result of a misaligned lower support arm for the overhead that was in the way of the pantograph. The panto struck it, leading to the destruction of the panto and subsequent supports and catenary. Also, having the 25,000V overhead finally coming down onto the roof of the loco/carriage, shorting and tripping the circuit breaker, I doubt they would want to go through the expense for a ‘test’ with all the mayhem caused. This European video shows what the railways there normally do with a special locomotive with cameras and other sensors to survey the line. The TGV has a special car, the Mélusine which can sandwich between the locomotive and the rest of the TGV trainset to watch the panto under normal operating conditions. They also have the Iris 320, a whole train devoted to test and measurement.

    • a test for the alignment of the catenary.

      Oh of course, that makes a lot of sense.


      Right, I remember that for the Mall & 205 (if memory serves, also known as “how we found out that that cat pole by Union Station will need to be moved because it’ll take the mirror off of a trailing Type 1”)

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