Next up, couplers

[jagged ben]

Ben,
I feel bad you have to run your trains under those horrible conditions.

They are not horrible conditions.  But the problems occur often enough that I have been skeptical that I can push fine-scale standards on my equipment without causing more.  One runaway train every few weeks is frustrating enough, I don't want it to be every time I run.

(To put it in perspective, we have a single one-foot section of mainline, out of about 400 real feat of it, that is out-of-gauge too wide for BLMA wheels.  Not FVM fine tread wheels, mind you, those do fine, and of course so do all other wheelsets ever sold.  I intend to fix this particular spot soon, although it won't be easy because it's in a tunnel of course.) 

Look at how thick a coupler is and you realize just how un-level track would have to be to un-couple cars. I mean I don't think I could purposely lay track that out of wack. A couple of wacks with a ball peen hammer might do the trick I guess. 

No Chris, I don't think you get it.  MT couplers have a lot of vertical play in themselves (especially the 1019 version, and also the 1015) and, not infrequently enough, a pair of couplers will vertically splay off center from each other when there is a lot of drawbar pull on them.  I think the RDA feature actually contributes to this in some cases.    I have seen this happen with couplers that start off looking perfectly level with each other.   Put them at the front of a heavy 60 car train and get it moving and suddenly they are barely hanging on to each other by the top of one knuckle and the bottom of the other, maybe with 1/32" of overlap.  They do fine half way around the layout until you hit that slight vertical curve that causes an 89' autorack to tilt 1/32" out of plane with the one behind it, and then half your train is rolling down the hill.

Now, obviously, one solution might be to body mount better couplers on my 89' autoracks  (not a walk in the park, since most of them use the underslung MT). 

And to be honest, I haven't actually experimented with Z scale body-mount couplers, so I don't know that they have the same problems with each other.  So maybe I should actually experiment with some and see if they are no better or worse than the N scale version on my club layout.

But to get back to the point... Wouldn't this all be a lot easier if there were a scale coupler that had a feature than countered the vertical splaying?  I'm still finding it quite irritating that people are blaming track and coupler mounting instead of acknowledging that, even under good conditions, N scale MT couplers made out of slippery plastic have a bad habit of sliding against each other and splaying vertically, and this is probably something that a better knuckle design could prevent or eliminate.

[jagged ben]

I don't think the height of the face of the coupler is the issue.  Slop, deflection, slippery coupler faces, and mold lines are.  The length of your train and the pulling weight can have an effect... just like bad trackwork.

Yes! Thank you for understanding what I'm saying!

What we need is more friction in the coupler mating surfaces.  Imagine if you could lightly groove the inside surface of the coupler.  Picture running an 00-90 tap into each coupler to create a series of fine threads in the mating surface.  The grooves on interlocking couplers would lock tight under pulling, should still allow you to pick up a car to uncouple and remove from the layout, and would stay coupled through some pretty rough trackwork.  And best of all, the coupler could have all the detail of the prototype without warts or blobs or shelves hanging off it. 

Awesome, awesome thinking.  Thanks for putting this idea into this thread. 

[peteski]

The N scale McHenry is a smaller copy of the HO version.  And McHenry had the whisker couplers long before Kadee did. When the patents for for the Kadee couplers ran out and everyone and their mother started to make knuckle couplers, bachmann and McHenry had similar couplers.  Eventually Kadee created a coupler that didn't need the flat brass spring and had it as part of the couplers shank.

Um, I thought the whiskers mentioned (mentioned in that post) for the H0 Kadee couplers were for the shank centering (not for the knuckle).  I'm pretty sure that Kadee had those long before McHenry was even around (when Kadee patents were still active).  Me thinks that you are thinking about the whisker which replaces the knuckle spring.  But I might just be confused.

What I was saying is that both H0 and N versions of McHenry couplers are very similar in construction to the Kadee H0 couplers (hinged knuckle). Micro Trains (ex Kadee) N scale couplers are of a totally different design (split shank).

[robert3985]

Got any extras that need a good home? 

Ed

Ed, wish I did!  I've got several applications for scale-sized dummies, as I am sure you have too!

Cheers!!
Bob Gilmore

[Catt]

Um, isn't that what McHenry coupler is?  The whiskers are plastic but the rest is just like the H0 Kadee coupler.

When I said the same that's exactly what I meant, Those plastic whiskers are usually worthless after awhile.

[Nato]

                I mentioned code 55 track not as trolling,but because I do believe it looks better, also having belonged to two clubs who abandoned 80 for 55 on modules I can say  it is just as ruggid as 80,one club did not use joiner tracks,but simply butted the modules together with joiners right at the end. If my current layoud didn't incorporate 4 N Quack (trak) modules with code 80 I would have gone with 55code,and if you ballist it correctly (see Robert/Bob's) UP signal bridge shot on my layout it is hard to tell it is code 80 so there you go, good trackiwork regardless of the code is a must for good operation.                                        Nate Goodman (Nato).

[Ike the BN Freak]

Um, I thought the whiskers mentioned (mentioned in that post) for the H0 Kadee couplers were for the shank centering (not for the knuckle).  I'm pretty sure that Kadee had those long before McHenry was even around (when Kadee patents were still active).  Me thinks that you are thinking about the whisker which replaces the knuckle spring.  But I might just be confused.

What I was saying is that both H0 and N versions of McHenry couplers are very similar in construction to the Kadee H0 couplers (hinged knuckle). Micro Trains (ex Kadee) N scale couplers are of a totally different design (split shank).

Nope, the knuckle whisker was the early design.  However they shank was always a whisker spring.  However when they came out, Kadee only had the #5 style, they hadn't come up with the whiskers on the shank for theirs yet.  Back when I was in HO, I'd use the cheap McHenrys with the whiskers on the knuckle spring and CA the knuckle shut and use those as dummies for coal hoppers.