Couplers

Pitchwife

Dreamer
I have been hearing and reading a lotabout the two different styles of couplers, ie. truck mounted or mounted directly to the car itself. It seems that everyone has an opinion on them but there doesn't seeem to be a consensus that favores one or the other. I thought that I'd try to get as many experianced inputs ad possible. Or is it one of those things that just depends on what you are running and what your conditions are?
If it makes any difference, I'm not modeling any prototype, and reliability is a high priority.

Clark
 

Gary Pfeil

Active Member
Clark, Body mounted couplers are more reliable in operation, particularly when being pushed. Body mounting couplers on long equipment such as passenger cars will restrict the radius they will run on however. See Woodie's comment on another thread. In addition to passenger cars, the 86' flats and auto racks usually have truck mounted couplers for this reason.

Gary
 

sumpter250

multiscale modelbuilder
Clark,
Gary is absolutely correct about reliability,especially when pushing. I had built several 89' auto racks, before kits were available, using Athearn flats and evergreen styrene products. The Athearn cars had truck mounted couplers, and could not be backed, even as the last car in the train. After Walthers marketed their autoracks, I couldn't get my bashes to operate reliably with the Walthers. The coupler adapters that Walthers used on their auto racks are now available separately, and since converting my bashed racks with these coupler adapters, there's no problems mixing the two, and doing reverse movements. I've also added the Walthers adapters to my Athearn flats, and 89' high cube boxcars.
Prototype rolling stock has frame(body) mounted couplers, and I feel that is the way the models should be done. The intent of truck mounted couplers was to be able to operate on the extremely tight curves of the toy train set.
Pete
 

Tyson Rayles

Active Member
On the other side of the coin, I quit using body mounted couplers years ago and will NEVER go back to them.Why? 1- got tired of filing, tapping, drilling, shimming etc. 2- operation was extremly poor, especially true when trying to couple on a curve of less then 15 inch radius (N-scale) 3- cars tended to derail when being pushed. Now I put the truck mounted units on and I'm done, every thing operates fine on my tighest (10 inch radius) and broadest (15 inch radius)curves and nothing derails. I don't know if the same dynamics apply to the other scales or not, but as long as I am in N-scale locos and cabeese are the only thing allowed on the road with body mounted couplers.
 
For HO I only use bodymounted Kadee's, they work just fine.
I have no experience of truck mounted couplers in HO.

For N I buy inexpensive rolling stock and immediately replace the trucks with MT truck/couplers.... takes 10 mins with wheels "in gauge" and the couplers conform with MT coupler gauge without any attention from me. These have performed extremely well on Atlas smallest radius curves (9 3/4" R). (hasslefree).

Errol
 
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