HO scale Trolley Pole Catcher

My now standard design of HO scale Trolley Pole catcher at work. The plastic arms centre the pole onto the wire, which it then engages on the yellow plastic wheel. The wire is tensioned using a spring. Most of the bits are Meccano spares.

[@leverettrailfan5414]

Wow, this is exceedingly clever!!! Sometime down the line, when I have a permanent layout, I want to have both a more realistic two rail trolley layout, and a 3-rail toy train layout.. I also have some 3 rail trolley equipment, and was wondering if I could ever mix the two, this seems like a very clever way to automatically engage a trolley pole onto the overhead!

[@andygautrey298]

Glad it was helpful!

[@Hacksworth_Sidings]

Simple, yet effective, not overly complex, and it does the job well

[@riklund691]

Brilliant idea.... similar to real life principles on genuine trolley type trams (if you travel on an open top tram,eg at Seaton Tramway in the UK you can see this in action!).

[@marcopianezze8217]

You Sir, are genius

[@Beatlefan67]

Brilliant! That's very inventive indeed.

[@trainsimulatordriver]

That's really cool. Great idea.

[@AstroKnight118]

That's clever. Didn't really think about how you would do it until I saw this, genius technique

[@MasterPenguinGuy]

That's amazing

[@monostripezebras]

very nice!

[@railroad9000]

Excellent!

[@martinleicht5911]

Neat !! 👍

[@MervynPartin]

Very neat

[@rollinwithunclepete824]

WOW! Einstein has a model railroad - who knew?

[@MLIW265-FAN]

Ware did you get that locomotive I love it

[@daviddiehl197]

Fine if your running fake overhead.

[@andygautrey298]

It's wired to one of the rails, just in case the purists who like live overhead with shiny wires that curve around corners get upset.

[@stevecoops8025]

@@andygautrey298 I'm working on a similar idea using a brass lead in. I designed my own inline trolley pole reverser

[@amazi6542]

you're*