Working catenary is much more popular in Europe than in North America or Japan., which is why most European-made electric models have working pantographs.
But I will agree about raising the pantograph. The MILW had that problem with their boxcabs! They were air-raised, using air cylinders to tighten the springs, so that the springs could be relaxed when the pans were down. But if the air leaked out while the motor was idle, which it's prone to doing, there was no way to raise the pans, to run the compressor, to fill the reservoir.
The solution was a trolley pole, with a flat contact rather than a wheel, that could be manually raised. It was ONLY for powering the air compressor, nothing else was to be run from it. But it would allow a dead motor to raise its pantograph.
