Strongest couplers?

[peteski]

The only issue with MTL TSCs is that they require some force during coupling and don't uncouple nowhere as easy as other knuckle couplers.  I'm not even talking about magnetic uncoupling here. So if one is running regular OPS sessions on a layout where trains are being assembled in the yard and there are lots of other industry switching operations, I think the standard MTL couplers make more sense. Those couple and uncouple much easier.

But for roundy-round operations and for appearance, TSCs are great.

[Pomperaugrr]

The only issue with MTL TSCs is that they require some force during coupling and don't uncouple nowhere as easy as other knuckle couplers.  I'm not even talking about magnetic uncoupling here. So if one is running regular OPS sessions on a layout where trains are being assembled in the yard and there are lots of other industry switching operations, I think the standard MTL couplers make more sense. Those couple and uncouple much easier.

But for roundy-round operations and for appearance, TSCs are great.

I agree.  They are great for unit trains, but not for switching intensive layouts. 

[Zack L-J]

So these true scale couplers are incompatible with normal couplers?

[peteski]

So these true scale couplers are incompatible with normal couplers?

Yes, incompatible.

[Zack L-J]

Might be worth looking into putting it on my big passenger trains with whatever the front car is being a conversion. Thanks for the tips y’all!

[nkalanaga]

Most passenger trains one can't really see the couplers anyway, as the diaphragms are in the way.  I wouldn't bother changing the couplers there, although a better looking one on the observation car would be nice, assuming your train has one.

[Pomperaugrr]

So these true scale couplers are incompatible with normal couplers?

That is correct. They are not compatible.  Here you can see the MT True Scale coupler on the left, vs a regular MT coupler on the right.
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[Maletrain]

We haven't heard from the Npossible coupler folks in a while.  Their goal is to make the TSC coupler design work well for coupling and uncoupling.  I have not committed to a standard, yet, but will soon have to do that.  Hoping to hear from the Npossible guys before that decision.

[turbowhiz]

I’m reviving this topic on “strongest couplers” having recently picked up a force gauge to scientifically prove what I’ve been observing in coupler testing. I’m looking for some community input on just how much force is reasonable to expect from a coupler before it fails.

Seems like prototypically in North America at least 14000 feet is effectively max train length. So roughly ~250 cars or so.

How much more force than “~250 cars” on level track is reasonable (assuming the train is being pulled from one end) .. 500? 750? 1000? 2000? Cars will string-line on typical layout curves long before 250 cars…

I’m just wondering from the community what they expect from their couplers with respect to maximum train length (one can transpose length to grades too.. Coupler force technically is what I’m after).

Has anyone encountered a scenario where they’ve actually broken a coupler?

I think by far the issue people will care about is how much force you can apply to couplers when they’re miss-aligned (i.e. uneven track/not quite perfect coupler heights) before they uncouple, which actually seems to be where trouble lies.

[randgust]

The only MT couplers I've ever broken resulted from dropping a car on the floor.  Yes, they will impact break.

Now, before the development of Reverse Draft Alignment (RDA) the vertical slippage problem under heavy load of MT's was just impossible.   They didn't break, they just would not hold before one or the other would slip up/down.   A partial slip pushed a trip pin down to snag something, and there's where most of the hostility toward trip pins comes from.  Jim Fitzgerald came up with a process to trim old couplers to a manual RDA and MT adopted it.  But all it takes is one car in a consist that's not RDA for something to fail.   The pins get blamed when it's the knuckle design.   If they are trimmed, the harder you pull the more they center.

The failure point on heavy trains can be more than the coupler.  On truck mounts the truck pin may pull out.   On body mounts a pin holding the coupler box to the frame (a typical approach) can pop out.

For brute strength though, I vote Caboose Hobbies, that's what I put in dedicated trainsets, or old cars that have Rapido boxes and resist conversion, like Rivarossi passenger cars.

[bbussey]

Nah unlike the awful sound this one isn’t BLI’s fault. I simply forgot about inertia when running the train back and forth to break it in and rammed at push pin at about 100 scale mph.

As long as y’all say the 1015s I already have are perfectly cromulent, I’m happy.

As for what I want to haul, I want to use the T1 as a helper for the DD40 I use on The Caboose Train, which i think currently stands at around 200 cabeese long.

The couplers in BLI motive power are not MTL 1015s, regardless of any resemblance.  They've been using a hybrid design in recent releases, AccuMate internal springs merged with MTL-style thumb and knuckle.  But the plastic is not the same.  Definitely not acetyl and possibly styrene.

[jdcolombo]

I've tried a lot of different couplers, including the TSC's, and I keep returning to the MT1015 or 1023/1027.  My layout is designed for operation, and I need a coupler that can be easily uncoupled with a pick, and that couples flawlessly.  The MT just works.  I don't have really long trains (25 cars max), but for an operations-oriented setup, the MT has proven best.

John C.

[ednadolski]

To me this seems a bit like overthinking, as a model train is far more likely to uncouple because of bad track, misaligned/snagged couplers, slinky/pogo effects, and such. (Esp. if taking about something like shows/exhibitions, with lots of rail joints and different levels of track quality). Beyond that it would be a matter of slipping the loco wheels, or stringlining some part of the train on an (unprototypically sharp/steep) curve or grade, before ever getting to a coupler breaking point (exploding Accumates or other junk being the exception).

For just a raw strength of the materials, I would suggest grabbing a few different couplers, hanging them from a fixed vertical height with some kind of weight as a load, and just adding dead weight to see which ones can take the most before they fail. Otherwise, I can't really think of an objective way to do a comparison.

That said, I don't know if there is a meaningful way to equate any kind of load weight to a number of cars that can be pulled, since the latter is subject to so many varying conditions.

I recall trying something like that with the LEZ couplers when some of us first started using them.  IIRC I got up to nearly one pound of dead weight, without the coupler breaking, before I decided that any further testing wouldn't prove much.

Ed

[jargonlet]

As much as I like the look of truescale couplers, the only thing I’ve ever used them on is an abba set of intermountain ft’s. They really do help the look of that set. When the truescale came out, there were 2 weekends a year that I ran on the layout at the Hinton Rail Museum. I was running 100 car trains on that layout. The only issues I ever had were accurate related other than when backing up. I had thought I might convert one day but never did and probably won’t at this point. I am working on body mounting regular MTL on my fleet though and don’t have any fears of coupler breakage no matter the train size.

[robert3985]

Way back when I was active in Ntrak, it was (and I suppose it still is) a fun thing to see how long a train you could pull on the setup.  Several of the club members were shooting for 100 car trains and achieved that pretty easily, but my longest train was 63 cars, pulled by one of my brass Key FEF-2's with a boiler full of low-melt-metal.

Although several times there were spontaneous uncouplings due to bad joiner tracks with all of our long trains, I never saw a coupler break on any of the trains.

Those days were before the Kadee/MTL patents expired, so the only "knuckle couplers" in use were Kadee/MTL N-scale couplers and Unimates.

Later, I converted everything to MTL Z-scale couplers and I could still pull trains of the same length, but the couplers were more finicky and had to be all of nearly exactly the same coupler height, or they would uncouple over trackwork the N-scale couplers didn't have a problem with.

As to what N-scale couplers are the strongest???  I would venture a guess that the Unimate couplers would probably take the prize...unless you can find some scale sized brass dummy couplers and convert several hundred cars to use them for the test.  Hahaha!!...that would be time consuming, expensive and impractical.

Speaking of "impractical" I rarely run trains on my home layout of over 40 cars...and only on priority freights since the rest of the trains have to fit on my center-sidings which are a minimum of 9' 7.5" long.  If I'm just trying to impress the kids who are counting cars while participating at a show, my 31 car trains being pulled by a Big Boy at shows impresses them enough.

The prototype Big Boy would pull trains of 4200 tons over the Wahsatch Grade between Ogden and Wahsatch UT...several hundred tons more than what it was designed for...but actual car counts on real Big Boy pulled trains were usually not over 70 or 80 cars going east out of Ogden, with the exceptions requiring a helper during high-traffic periods, which cut off at the top of the grade, the lone Big Boy being able to handle the over-tonnage train on more level track from Wahsatch to Green River and beyond.

Since my layout design elements are slightly less than half the length of the equivalent prototype scenes, it only stands to reason that my longest trains should be approximately 1/2 the length of the prototype trains that traversed that territory, so...30 to 35 car freights are just right for me, and I don't miss pulling 60+ car trains one whit.

Even at that, I'll be interested to see what your findings are when your testing is complete. 

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore