Sergent couplers

[brakie]

The couplers stay centered when the cars are uncoupled at the hump crest.Cars that doesn't couple is coupled by the puller crew.Carmen will not inspect a train until its made up and on the outbound yard track.Yard brakeman doesn't connect the air hose this is done by carmen as they inspect the train.You see a brakeman doesn't have time to walk a (say)150-200 car train to connect the air hoses because he has yard switching to do.

 

[KCS]

Well guy's. I got them in. I've assembled and swaped all of my rolling stock to sergent. All I can say is wow. :::To be continued:::

 

[Russ Bellinis]

Did you buy the ready to mount units or the ones that need to be built up first? If you bought the ones needing assembly, how difficult was it to assemble them?

 

[KCS]

I bought the kit form couplers. How ever I also bought this new contraption made for easier construction of the couplers. These thins are well worth the money paid. I bought enough to convert everything I own over to Sergent. I have a sandwich bag full of Kadee #5's, and #118's.If you've seen any of these pictures on the net where everything is so detailed, you can't tell it from the real thing until you look at the unsightly Kadee coupler that gives it away. Well, put Sergents in a picture like that and you won't be able to tell the difference. I bought the etched cut levers for the bottom of the couplers from Sergent sense I have all cut lever bars installed on all of my equipment with true scale air hose's.

I showed a couple of people and all they could say is "museum quality" right off the bat. Plus using all Kato 100 ton roller bearing trucks on all of my cars with the spinning wheel caps. A couple of con's to Sergent though. They aren't as strong as a Kadee so if you do get them no slamming the cars together really hard (like some people I know) or you can break the head off the shank. Another thing I these couplers aren't all that great on jerky locomotives. They are more suited to makers like Atlas, Kato, etc. Do to the very smooth starts and stops and extremely slow speed for prototype coupling. A jerky locomotive makes fast starts and stops and could hit a joint to fast and cause the coupler to move out of alignment.

It cost me $78.00 for 8 packs of couplers, one coupler building tool, one uncoupler (a must. nothing else will do!) and 4 etched cut levers for bottom operating couplers (10 per sprue) I started to make the $200.00 order but figured just buy enough to equip what I have now and then buy them as I go from here. As far as the up and down movement from uneven track and how well they do I can't say. I don't have any place to run them right now. All I can say is that if you do switch over that you had better have some damn good smooth track work because these things are tiny and doesn't have a whole lot of room for up and down movement before coming uncoupled. On a scale 1-10, 10 being best, I give them an 8-1/2 in operation and a 10 in visual appearance.:thumb: announce1

 

[Russ Bellinis]

I'm going to build a "L" shaped switching layout of the L. A. Junction at home. It will have far better track than the prototype, which is famous for bad track. I'll stick to Kaddees for the rolling stock I use on the modular club layout set ups since we inevitably have some "vertical curves" on the joiner tracks.

 

[MilesWestern]

so, how about a photograph of a sergent-equipped car, and a real one side by side for comparison...I'm intrigued by these couplers from what I hear, thaty sound pretty intresting. However, it's hard enough for me to keep an all kadee fleet... :sign1:

 

[KCS]

Don't worry guy's. I've got pictures now. Just gotta go have them developed. However I am adding some important information on these couplers as I recently discovered after the first use last night. If you are running 18" curves or tighter then these couplers arn't for you. They are better suited for 22" and larger curves do to the couplers being so small the cars and locomotives couple really close.

Therefore when in a curve the corners of the cars and locomotives are so close to gather that they will rip any details off of each other but not enough to rub car body to car body. As for a 20" curve I really don't know. I guess I'll have to take some out to the club house one day and find out what they can take. The gathering range isn't all to bad although they do need to be kept more inline than Kadees. Then again there's nothing wrong with doing everything on a model just like the prototype.

On all other aspects, these things are great! I've neevr seen my locomoives and rolling stock look better. Try'em on those new Atlas'. They'll make you drool.

 

[LoudMusic]

http://www.irritatedvowel.com/Railroad/Details/Couplers/Default.aspx

 

[Russ Bellinis]

Don't worry guy's. I've got pictures now. Just gotta go have them developed. However I am adding some important information on these couplers as I recently discovered after the first use last night. If you are running 18" curves or tighter then these couplers arn't for you. They are better suited for 22" and larger curves do to the couplers being so small the cars and locomotives couple really close.

Therefore when in a curve the corners of the cars and locomotives are so close to gather that they will rip any details off of each other but not enough to rub car body to car body. As for a 20" curve I really don't know. I guess I'll have to take some out to the club house one day and find out what they can take. The gathering range isn't all to bad although they do need to be kept more inline than Kadees. Then again there's nothing wrong with doing everything on a model just like the prototype.

On all other aspects, these things are great! I've neevr seen my locomoives and rolling stock look better. Try'em on those new Atlas'. They'll make you drool.

Charles, I don't know what era you are modeling. If you are doing a fairly modern era, do you use Walther's extension boxes to simulate the modern cushioned coupler pockets? They might move the coupler out from the car far enough to make the difference on your 18 inch radius curves.

 

[KCS]

Well, I thought about swaping to the scale Draft Gear Box's (DGB) that Sergent has but the problem is trying to mount them to Athearn frames. I don't know why but I've noticed 90% of Athearn cars has the DGB flush with the ends of the cars. The only ones I've that aren't are the 60' flats and I only have one of those but it's under going new paint and detailing. Plus Athearn has those metal clip box's for the draft gear rather than a screw in design.

I have a Walthers 100 ortner(?) hopper and the couplers work just fine because they are located properly. Now I do have a center beam flat I built from a McKean kit but the coupler DGB was way up under the car so I took a wrecked Atlas 60' box car and cut off the out set extended DGB and mounted them to the center beam and gave it a lot of clearance. I just lost my job last Thursday so I'll have to wait if I decide to convert every thing over to scale DGB's.

It's just a lot of work to mount them. Same as the Kadees and getting them centered on the car while watching height. However I do think the Sergent should have had at least another full 1/cm to the shank of the coupler. The way they are now, the yoke sit's scale length from the striker plates on most cars. Locomotives are fine. They are located close to the pilots like they are supossed to be.

I'm kinda hopeing Sergent will start offering SF shelf couplers and long shank couplers for those cars that are supposed to have long shanks and the shelf's for tanks and hoppers as needed. If he get's enough requests for SF and long shank couplers as any other model manufacture and type of model then he will start producing them.

 

[KCS]

I forgot to add. I do model early 90's to current. I don't have a layout, I was just using some old life-like power-loc track that I had laying around. Most of my cars are to big for 18" anyway.

 

[Russ Bellinis]

What I was talking about previously was "cushion car coupler pocket" part number 933-1030 www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-1030