Best Of Notes on body-mount couplers (work-in-progress)

[DKS]

Hi all
I know it's maybe a dumb question, but ... I've very few cars with a body-mount coupler, so I've not so much direct experience.
One friend here ask about "minumum track radius" as he have some tight curves up to 22-23 cm ( more or less 9") and expresses concern that this modification can take to some trouble.
Can somebody tell us about his experience or give a "dumb rule"? Relation with car length, etc ....
Thanks in adv
Cheers

The problem you will run into is when you have a mix of car lengths. If all of the cars are roughly the same length, tight curves will not be much trouble (except when backing). But if you have 40-footers mixed in with 60-footers, then you'll start flipping cars.

[GaryHinshaw]

Thanks for the feedback guys.  Ed, I too have sometimes used shims behind the screw to level out a slightly drooping box -- it looks like I need to break the glue joint on this one and do the same.  Should be pretty straightforward. 

In the meantime I've got two Intermountain reefers just about done - these being the first completed example of cars with extended draft gear.  (Still need to add a bit more weathering to them before they are truly complete.)  The first step was to lower the ride height by filing the raised ring on the bolster pad flat and switching to BLMA 70T trucks.  This made the floor height exactly right for the draft gear with no further fiddling required.  This pair of shots shows the new ride height and how much thinner the etched boxes are than the MT boxes:




And some shots of the draft gear before & after:





Almost ready for service in the Edison packing house district:



Thanks for looking.
-gfh

[ryan_wilkerson]

Gary,
Those ARMN reefers look great. Did you use off the shelf decals for the graffiti?

[GaryHinshaw]

Thanks Ryan.  Yes, these are mostly straight from the Blair Line sets.  Up close the halftone printing is a bit rough, but it looks quite good from a foot away, and their selection is pretty authentic.

[tom mann]

Wow, huge difference there.

[ednadolski]

I've installed some more of these couplers on some Kato locos, here is a video:

The first maxi car on this train also has the etched pockets + couplers.    These were pretty straightforward to install on the maxi (tho if you look close, you can see that I haven't gotten around to putting the end walkway back on  ).

These couplers do connect to the Kato couplers, with a tad bit of coaxing.  BTW with the stock Kato couplers, this consist had chronic problems with undesired uncouplings.   Since I switched to the Z couplers, that problem has disappeared.


I've also put together another batch of pockets & couplers.   These are both the regular and long air hose versions.   I also primed them and pre-painted the air hoses:







Now it's on to doing some more installs!   

Ed

[GaryHinshaw]

Excellent!  The close coupling on the locos is great.  A few questions:

1. I gather the stack conversion is on a DI set?  Did you have any issue with the end platform being rigid enough to maintain a stable coupler height?  Did you use a screw, or just glue?

2. I'd love to see a side view of one of the extended hoses.  I've been a bit puzzled about how to best form the bends so that the end of the hose is in a good location.  Mine tend to want to stick out beyond the coupler quite a bit.

My work bench has a similar number of pockets in a similar state.  I've got a string of tank cars in the queue this weekend. 

-gfh

[jagged ben]

Nice train, Ed.

[ednadolski]

1. I gather the stack conversion is on a DI set?  Did you have any issue with the end platform being rigid enough to maintain a stable coupler height?  Did you use a screw, or just glue?

Yes, that's the DI car.  I used a good old 00-90, just be sure to use a light touch when drilling and tapping (but if you can drill & tap an IM 5161 hopper, the DI maxi is no problem ).

2. I'd love to see a side view of one of the extended hoses.  I've been a bit puzzled about how to best form the bends so that the end of the hose is in a good location.  Mine tend to want to stick out beyond the coupler quite a bit.

Here you go:



The trick here is to form an additional bend in the "air pipe" segment just below the "valve".   The prototype often has a 90-degree elbow installed here (see this reference image).  However I could not make the same bend in the drawing for the etching, because that would have put the hose into the middle of the bottom cover.  So I consider this additional bend to be a normal step in the assembly process.  Just try to keep some amount of radius on it, rather than letting it turn into a 'kink'

Nice train, Ed.

Thanks Ben!   When I visited the real Loop about 10 years ago, I saw a stack train much like that one, with mostly the blue Hanjin and Senator containers. So I always had it in mind to try to model it some day. (True, it had older engines and not ES44s.)   Years ago I bought a bunch of the DI Senator containers, and DI finally (at long last!)  did a run of the Hanjins as well (and some of the Kato cars came with the Hanjins).   So I now have enough of the right containers to make a train, tho I may try to pick up a few more containers & cars, since that real one didn't have the spine cars either.... 


-Ed

[jagged ben]

Thanks Ben!   When I visited the real Loop about 10 years ago, I saw a stack train much like that one, with mostly the blue Hanjin and Senator containers. So I always had it in mind to try to model it some day. (True, it had older engines and not ES44s.)   Years ago I bought a bunch of the DI Senator containers, and DI finally (at long last!)  did a run of the Hanjins as well (and some of the Kato cars came with the Hanjins).   So I now have enough of the right containers to make a train, tho I may try to pick up a few more containers & cars, since that real one didn't have the spine cars either.... 

-Ed

As something of a historian of double-stack operations, I can always tell when someone is basing a train off a prototype moment rather than throwing together their random collection of containers with paint schemes they liked.        Oh, and I knew you tacked on the TOFCs just to make the train longer, but there's probably a prototype for that somewhere. 

[GaryHinshaw]

Thanks for the air hose info Ed.  The diagram is very helpful - I'd forgotten that the prototype hoses don't hang down because they're supported by a cable.  That makes a difference in how to shape them.

-gfh

P.S. I too appreciated the container consist.  That's why it bugs the h*ll out of me that I can't get modern 53' cans in Hunt and Schneider...     Oh, and I too have yet to apply hitches to my BLMA spines.    No problem though because I can't buy 53' trailers anyway.   

[central.vermont]

Ed,
That's a great layout you have there. I loved watching that!!
One question about an observation I saw in the video. That farmer sitting on a milking chair trying to get milk from a Bull is quite funny! 

Jon

[ednadolski]

Thanks Jon, I was wondering if anyone would comment on that!        You know what they say about a prototype for everything... I only hope that the Loop Ranch folks won't take any offense! 

Ed

[James Costello]

P.S. I too appreciated the container consist.  That's why it bugs the h*ll out of me that I can't get modern 53' cans in Hunt and Schneider...     Oh, and I too have yet to apply hitches to my BLMA spines.    No problem though because I can't buy 53' trailers anyway.   

Better not look at Athearn's HO releases this month... 

[GaryHinshaw]

Better not look at Athearn's HO releases this month... 

Tell me about it, pretty much everything on my intermodal wish list is already produced by Athearn in HO.... It would be a no-brainer for them to do these in N, given the rather huge gap that exists now, and the potential sales volume (I would think the Ntrak crowd would eat these up).  I've given up on DI ever producing 53' containers or trailers again.  I've heard rumors about other N scale 53' trailers in the works, but nothing yet.  Who knows, maybe we'll have a glut soon - in the meantime thank goodness for Kato cans.

Now back to couplers!