Apparatus have been designed to simulate the wear from conductors in a railway current collection system. The main features of the wear machine include a continuous monitoring of the strip wear, strip traversing, and dwell‐time test facilities for the investigation of oxidational wear on a copper disk, simulating the contact wire. Disk wear is measuredinsituby the spherical indentations method. Typical results of the specific wear rate are also presented to demonstrate the capability of the apparatus.