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I'm in the process of doing the same thing, upgrading a 300-car fleet of old cheap N-scale junk ot the same set of higher standards, relying on weathering to blend them in amongst the better equipment. What I decided to do was to use the truck-mounted couplers that Micro-Trains offers as my standard, so that the coupler heights are uniform regardless of the car body. I do have body-mounted couplers on my engines, though, which forces me to pay attention to curve radius (a body-mounted coupler swings wide on tight curves, while truck-mounted couplers stay centered over the track). <br /> <br />Are you sure that you're describing N-scale equipment? You mention "horn-hook" couplers which are the standard for HO equipment. As for 3-axle trucks on freight equipment, you should know that very few freight cars ever had more than 2 axles per truck. Depressed-center flat cars have 3-axle trucks frequently due to the increased load they are capable of. My favorite RR, the Norfolk & Western, experimented with coal gondola design by creating a deep-sided and long gondola that rode on 3-axle trucks; these were rated for 100 tons of load, but got supplanted by hopper designs based on 2-axle trucks, which eventually got up to the same 100-ton rating. I would suggest that you only use 3-axle trucks on a model which you have researched and discovered to use them.
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