General Discussion (Model Railroader)

What is the diffrence between a magnetic and a standard coupling and how does it work? Can I some how have my tracks set up to disconect a car from the engine without even touching the units themself? Please forgive the questions I am new to the magnetic couplers.

Thank You,

John Murphy Jr

Go to the KADEE website. They will explain everything you need to know and more..

http://www.kadee.com/index.shtml

 The couplers are not magnetic.  They have a trip pin that curves down from the coupler that is sensitive to a magnet place between or under the rails.  When two couplers are over the magnet with slack the trip pins are attracted to the sides and the couplers open uncoupling the cars.  The idea is that you can uncouple without touching the couplers or reaching in with your hand. 

Delayed couplers mean that when you push the cars together over a magnet, the whole coupler head is pulled sideways and the couplers don't engage - you use the feature to push a car to another place without coupling.  To couple you have to push the car off the magnet, pull away, and back up to couple.  Non delayed you push the cars off the magnet to couple.  This can be simplified by having an electro magnet that is turned on and off.

One problem is false uncoupling. When running the train over a magnet if the locomotive slows a little the cars will push forward momentarily causeing slack - if this happens over a magnet the cars uncouple.  Using an electro magnet solves this problem.   Another problem is that when pushing a car, if the pusher slows the couplers disengage and return to their normal positions and couple together if further pushing is attempted.

For these reasons some people use skewers instead of magnets.  You have to reach in with your hand, but uncoupling occurs where you want it, when you want it.  You could use a combination of magnets and electro magnets in hard to reach places and skewers elsewhere.

Enjoy

Paul

Come back after reading that, because there's more to the magnets than just you can. Great care needs to be taken when you place them. Any train going over them is subject to the magnets. If it gos slow enough, you can actually end up uncoupling the entire train in some ce where you don't want to. Short sidings where your dropping a car or two are great for these things, station terminals are not. And like the rest of the layout, you need to be able to reach the magnet, and around it. in case you do break more train than you wanted. Also, you will have to reach in periodically, either with a switch pick from Kadee or Accumate (my preference), a thin dowel with a flathead point on the end, (don't let others think it's a toothpick) , or a Rix magnetic wand (mgnets on the sides that pull the couplers apart, sometimes a tight fit between some cars)