To reduce the wear of contact wire, use of carbon as contact strips is effective. Recently, metal / carbon composites, which have lower electric resistivity and higher mechanical strength than pure carbon, have been developed and used as pantograph contact strips of electric vehicles on several conventional narrow gauge lines. On the Shinkansen lines, pure carbon and carbon composite materials are not used because of their weakness to impacts. The authors have developed and tested the composites that are strong enough to be applicable for pantograph contact strip of the Shinkansen electric vehicles. This paper is an interim report on the development of the composite materials.