Kadee couplers on Lima Mineral Wagon

[gmpullman]

 

Hi, I have done a little coupler "engineering" in order to fit them to things like certain brass cars or locomotive pilots, where there is very little room for placing a full draft gear box.

I've also used a few of the NEM adapters for a couple of TRIX cars I have in HO.

L. Zhou

Measuring the Kadee couplers against the height gauge, I found it was a bit low. I used a shim to boost it up, but it turned out that it was still low. 

You may find that an offset shank may be handy for finding the correst height for a particular car. Kadee has a handy data sheet for this:

 

https://www.kadee.com/documents/coupler_primer_handout_new.pdf

Kadee has a "snap" together draft gear box so that even if you glue the box in place you can still pry the cover off in case you need to change the coupler or make modifications.

https://www.kadee.com/ho-scale-couplers-c-272_230_231/242-ho-scale-universal-black-box-snaptogether-insulated-gearbox-lids-p-332.htm

Good luck, Ed

[SeeYou190]

Welcome to a great new part of model railroading.

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I install Kadee's coupler boxes on almost all of my equipment. It becomes pretty easy once you knock a few of them out.

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I have needed to glue a few in place, but screws are my preferred method.

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-Kevin

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[L. Zhou]

Hello everyone, 

I picked up a British Railways Steel Mineral Wagon made by Lima in OO scale a few weeks ago at a train show. I installed Kadee couplers so it can run well with my North American fleet. 

The Mineral Wagon had no NEM box so I had to remove the existing hook and loop coupler and glue the coupler box into place. I used the Kadee #156 coupler that I also picked up at the train show. The coupler box was glued into place with Loctite Superglue which somewhat attacked the plastic. 

(Having no screws on hand, I glued the coupler box shut.)

 

Measuring the Kadee couplers against the height gauge, I found it was a bit low. I used a shim to boost it up, but it turned out that it was still low. At that point, I just left it there at that height, because in order to make the couplers the correct height, I would have to remove the box again and start filing it down. Overall it was a somewhat sucessful endevour, as it was the first time I have ever installed a Kadee coupler box.