Catenary for Electrics & Trolleys

Catenary used on railroads is usually made heavier than a trolley line.  The overhead wire doesn't care if it gets AC or DC., it's up to your trolley.    Style, era is what you may make it.  You can shorten the MTH towers to fit your trolleys.  It's your design.   

I think railroad catenary would be too massive for a city street and really change your street scene.  Electric locomotives usually use pantographs where as most North American trolleys and interurbans used trolley poles. Overhead for crossovers and turnouts is more complicated with trolley poles.  But if you don't have any switches or crossovers it doesn't matter.

Most people running trolleys put frogs in the trolley wire so the pole will follow the car through a switch. Mainline electrification was usually done with pantographs, so a frog in the wire was not necessary. Pantographs do not like trolley frogs, especially under heavy load or at speed.  On interurbans with poles on passenger equipment and pantographs on freight equipment, the comppromise was to bring the siding wire parallel to the mainline wire for several pole lengths.  It was the train crew's responsibility to jump the pole to the other wire on the fly. It was also common to have the centenary on the main line and in yards and on city streets to switch to simple suspension, where frogs were used.  There is nothing about the design of catenary which precludes using trolley frogs in it.  There are still several examples of this around the country. As far as I know, there are no frogs made for the MTH catenary.  I do not know if the the MTH catenary is thin enough for use with available trolley poles. 

I really appreciate everyone's comments! Thank you ALL very much, Terry