contact shoe

plural contact shoes

1. rail transportA current collector on an electric train which is in contact with the live rail.
2. A part of a pantograph on a train or tram which, when raised, maintains contact with an overhead electric wire.

   The leading locomotive of the double-headed 3.5 p.m. Manchester Piccadilly-Plymouth shed the contact shoe of its pantograph, which bounced back along the roof and hit the pantograph of the second locomotive, which thereupon lost its contact shoe also.

   1963 January, “Motive power miscellany”, in Modern Railways, page 64