Standard or best HO couplers ??

[Anonymous]

I had a large HO layout before I was married but have had everything stored for 35 years until I recently retired. I have maybe 120 rolling stock, freight and passenger, stored. All my couplers were the old "standard" NMRA type. In the last several years I have been accumulating locomotives, both in the US and in Europe where I worked the last 3 years before retirement. I have maybe 6-8 new locomotives including a couple of neat brass ones, but all either have no couplers or some new type of knuckle coupler. I included a large upstairs room for my layout when we built our retirement home. I am now ready to start construction but wonder what is now the "standard" or most common type of HO coupler. I don't know whether to add NMRA couplers to my engines or whether to replace the ones on all my rolling stock and if so with which type. I would welcome any advice.

[Anonymous]

Kadee couplers, and the many brands compatible with them, have now become the industry standard.

Welcome back!

--John

[Anonymous]

Just read your post. To repeat what you no doubt read many times since the posting, I recommend installing KADEEs (of the appropriate configuration) on all your power and rolling stock.

George

[Anonymous]

I am in agreement with the others who reccommend Kadee Couplers. There are many different styles of Kadees. I would reccommend going to the Kadee web site to determine which coupler installs correctly on each peice. Kadee has a table of reccommended couplers for each type and manufacturer of your stock. I don't have the link at hand but if you just type in Kadee in your browsers search you will be able to find it and just browse their site.

As far as I can tell Kadee is one of the few that follows the NMRA Standards for compatiblilty between manufacturers. There may be others but I'm not sure.

A couple of other items you should consider obtaining are the height gauges and Pliers for bending the air line on the coupler.

[Anonymous]

Here are a few suggested sites.

http://www.nmra.org/beginner/couplers.html

www.kadee.com

www.kadee.com/conv/list.htm for coupler conversions

http://kadee.com/htmbord/page120.htm for coupler gauge

http://www.kadee.com/htmbord/page160.htm for trip pin pliers

KD stands for the brothers Keith & Dale that invented the Kadee 45+ years ago

KD makes over 40 different couplers for various loco/car applications.

Also makes freight cars, wheelsets, and many other fine products/tools

[Anonymous]

The 35 year old age of your rolling stock suggest that they may have plastic wheels.

Review the following;

http://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/002/197xvpbs.asp

Beware that metal wheel set axles come in various lenghts and may not be noticeable
to the naked eye.

Wheel sets comes in 28",33"36" & 38"

Generally 33" is the norm for freight and 36" for passenger except some of the
heavy weight rivarossi passenger cars.


Nickel silver track is the best conductor for electricity and does require regular
cleaning as well as power pick-ups.

There are 10-12 various cleaners on the market which icludes cheap rubbing
alcohol or metal cleaning polish, MAAS for $3.00 at target. Automotive polishing
compound will also do the job. There are some simple cleaning procedures
when using the paste.

[CP5415]

If you have problems determining what KD coupler works for your locomotives & or rolling stock, you can ask Kadee direct for their advice.

http://www.kadee.com/mail/mail.htm

is the link you can use to ask them.

Gordon

[cacole]

Something else that needs to be checked before you jump into a massive conversion project only to discover that it can't be done is, are the majority of couplers on your rolling stock body mounted or truck mounted? If they are truck mounted, so-called Talgo trucks, installing any replacement couplers or wheelsets can become an impossible task. On this type of rolling stock, the trucks are usually held in place by a plastic pin, and the plastic wheels have blunt pointed axles instead of needle point like most replacement metal wheels. I have a lot of these items that are simply not worth the cost of trying to upgrade. If your rolling stock was made by Tyco, Model Power, Life Like, ATT, Lima, AHM, or any company other than Athearn, they usually had truck-mounted couplers and trying to replace these is going to cost more than you originally paid for the items.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cacole

Something else that needs to be checked before you jump into a massive conversion project only to discover that it can't be done is, are the majority of couplers on your rolling stock body mounted or truck mounted? I

E X C E L L E N T P O I N T!

[Anonymous]

Fit Kadees, if you can. They're well worth the effort. You might want to consider the scale-size #58s - these have an almost scale-sized coupler head but are otherwise identical to the #5s. I've had varying degrees of success with these - bought a couple of packs to try them out. On a couple of Athearn gondolas, they worked fine and looked great. Unfortunately, when I came to fit them to a pair of Athearn SW7s, trouble started - they wouldn't self-centre, they wouldn't stay at the correct height...Anyone got any ideas?

I use standard Kadees on the rest of my fleet - a mixture of #5s and some of the more specialist offset couplers on certain cars. Kadee's website has useful info on which couplers should fit which cars, though I've found an error or two - they recommend the #28 for the Athearn Dash 9 and AC4400, this would be too low, I found a #21 and a#27 much better.