Black Trip-Pins on new MTL couplers

[sumfred]

is it just me seeing this now or is MTL now painting the trip pins black?
Just received a new order of 2004 assembled couplers and they have black trip-pins, all previous ones had the old bronze pins.
Fred

[Doug G.]

They are probably chemically blackened and MT has variously had bright copper-colored, dull copper-colored (bronze-like), and black pins, over the years.

Doug

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I've noticed this on most of my recent MTL stuff. I definitely like them!

[johnb]

It was announced a few months ago

[peteski]

Long time ago the coupler pins were chemically blackened.
Then they stopped that practice for quite some time (the pins were copper color), Now, as others have mentioned, they again started chemically blackening the pins.  I'm glad they started doing it again.

EDIT:  The above applies to couplers included on their ready-to-run rolling stock.  Like jagged ben stated, the individual couplers always had black (never bare copper-color) trip pins. Well, at least in the last 40 years.

[jagged ben]

The trip pins that come in coupler kits have always been chemically blackened as long as I can remember, which is 30ish years.  It is only the more recent factory assembled couplers that aren't blackened.   I wouldn't have noticed as almost all my coupler have blackened trip pins. (Well, that includes knockoff IM, BLMA, Trainworx etc. as well).

[robert3985]

"Trip pins" eh?  That's an appropriate name for sure.  I prefer "dongles", but all of mine get cut off anyway.  Saves the occasional "tripping" over grade crossings, turnouts, diamonds, guardrails etc. etc. since I stopped using magnets decades ago.

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore