Bow collector

The first bow collector was designed by the German engineer Walter Reichel in 1889 and shown at the World Expo in Paris the same year.

The Hobart electric tramway system - the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, opened in 1893 - used Siemens cars with very early bow collectors.

The very earliest versions were simply very heavy-gauge wire or steel bars bent into a rectangular shape and mounted long-side-down on the tramcar roof.

That top edge is made of a 1-inch (or more) wide steel rod, machined to have a bow-shaped cross section; that cross-section inspired the name.

To allow this to happen, the overhead wire must be raised by several inches at places where the bows are swung over, such as terminals and turn-outs.

In addition to some vintage tramways, bow collectors are still used in some tram systems in the former Soviet Union, e. g., in Kazan, Minsk, and Dzerzhinsk.

On the Isle of Man, the Snaefell Mountain Railway's implementation is unusual in that the overhead wire is slack and free to hang in a catenary.

Hopkinson bow collectors are used, to avoid problems with trolley poles in high winds on the mountainous route[2] – the Snaefell line also uses a Fell rail for braking.

A small hinged bow frame was placed on top of the fixed uprights, giving a sprung contact.

A lot of tram systems using pantographs on main rolling stock have some heritage fleet with bow collectors.