Lionel Trolley 60

When I bought mine, the plastic part that holds the pole was mounted a bit off, and all I had to do was pop it off and reposition it. I hope that's what your problem is. 

Thanks Art, unfortunately, it isn't the amount of travel is too much. Even attempting to compensate by allowing it to go to far on both sides still ends up with at least 15 degrees off on both sides. 

The mechanism of the trolley was designed that way. Try re-positioning the pole mounting clip on the shaft to center the pole.

Larry

The pole with spring bumper will always swing about 220 degrees instead of 180. It is the way the sliding contact bar has the gear teeth stamp out. The later improved solid bumper version swings at 180.

Thanks everyone. I agree with Chuck's analysis when the contact bar was cut it was cut a little to long so the arc is too wide. Repositioning the trolley pole on the shaft can spread that extra 20 or 40 degrees so the problem is less noticeable but won't cure it.

The solution will be to get as much of the excess to one side as possible and constrain the slide contact bar's range of motion. It does not need to slide the full travel to make contact so if I can stop the travel at a point where it still makes reliable contact but does not go all the way it should cure this or at least minimize the excess swing.

I plan to try this using something like a bump of hot glue, take or something similar that can be easily removed as I try to find the sweet spot. That way if it doesn't work it can easily be removed with no permanent damage to the car and if I can find that magic combination of pole position and restraining the travel I can try something more permanent.

This trolley is far from pristine so I can afford to gamble, I picked it up at a train show more than 20 years ago out of a junk box for a couple of bucks and fixed it, but it has some body damage on one side so it always faces the wall side of the layout.