[Guest]

Posted By Dan Pierce on 11/10/2008 4:28 AM
While I and others consider Kadee's to be the best, they do have one small issue.

If not body mounted, they will come apart on uneven track due to the trucks making the coupler flex up and down.

If body mounted, this just can not happen.

Unfortunately on some engines this will require hacking of the body to get the coupler mounted properly.

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This is true, if the truck mounted couplers are not properly mounted, then the coupler tang can move upwards or downwards under load and the couplers will slip under/over each other. This particular problem is worse with the #1 Kadee couplers. However, most truck mounting configurations can be easily constrained such that the coupler is fixed in height similarly to a body mount and then this problem does not occur. The solution is different on every kind of car and loco but it can and should be done.

Body mounts just do not work in some track geometry situations. The obvious solution is to fix the trackwork, but in some cases this is not practical. Truck mounts can be made to work and are more tolerant to some particular track geometries.

 

[Great Western]

Posted By W3NZL on 11/10/2008 7:04 AM

Could it be that Kadee's patents
R expiring on their LS couplers, and we'll soon see a flood of Kadee compatible
look-a-likes from the mfgrs and the aftermarket ???
The sooner the better as far as I'm concerned...
Paul R...


Paul,

You may know about the new "Kuppler" that Aristo will be introducing in the near future. I, for one, am very interested in its appearance and it will be interesting to get to know how well it works. You guys Stateside will probably have given your verdict before it hits my shores.


I stick to Bachmann, on my Big Hauler stock and Aristo on Aristo stock, Issues are rare - usually operator generated!

The replacement of couplers has had a low priority on my RR.

 

[Fred]

I have a LGB, Bachman, USA. and Aristocraft (more than 50% is Aristo). Since the different mfgrs don't mate with the others I chose Aristo knuckle couplers. When I would go to my local hobby shop to buy some Aristo knuckles I was told I should go with KD's (I had experienced KD's for 40 yrs in HO, knew they were good) because the KD's worked better and he sold the KD's for less than the Aristo's but I thought I would stick with the Aristos but after a couple of years I found the Aristo's to start failing in either trying to couple or uncouple. As a result I then replaced all ( lucky for me I only had about 30 cars) the Aristo knuckle couplers with KD 831's (due to some cujrves & turnouts), more $$$$ wasted. I should have gone with KD's from the beginning, I'm so much happier now with the KD's, both coupling & hand uncoupling is so much easier.

 

[Art]

I use Kadee and Aristo couplers at the same time. They couple together with no problems and although I like the Kadee best it is easy to use either.

 

[fildowns]

Posted By Fred on 11/10/2008 11:40 AM
...so much happier now with the KD's, both coupling & hand uncoupling is so much easier.

Fred makes a good point here and it's why I particularly prefer KDs. Just being able to lift out a car from anywhere in the train without having to click the couplers open or disturb surrounding cars is something I like.

Unless your track is really flat though, I would say stick with G couplers. I started out with KD #1 and they uncoupled all over the place....luckily for me I switched to G after about only 6 cars and never looked back.

There's a lot of talk about being able to play with stuff straight out of the box. And that's maybe very important for some I guess. But there's also something to be said about the fun that's to be had 'tweaking'. If I never had to adjust/add/file/tighten/glue/swap/lube/solder at least half of the stuff I buy I wouldn't have anywhere near so much fun! I don't enjoy buying KDs. But the enjoyment fixing them to a new car and the smoothness of it's operation outweighs that for me.

We may all moan about stuff that needs fixing out of the box - and sometimes it is serious and has to be sent back. But don't think for one moment that these guys that take all the pictures and then update their websites with advice don't take some satisfaction from finding that fix. And both theirs and our hobby-time is the richer for it.

Just ask GregE, RayM, PaulN to name just 3 - if they didn't have all these fixes to help us all out with what would they do with their website space and all that time eh? LOL!!

 

[Bob Pero]

I am slowly converting all my rolling stock to Kadee. I have done all my motive power and am slowly working on my fleet of freight cars.

 

[NTCGRR]

as you can see its a "stage" or growth of your RR. I remember finally going for the steel wheels VS plastic.
I used to never buy buildings because of the cost. Now , I'm to lazy to build them.

 

[Greg Elmassian]

Another little-know tip on Kadees, is that the molds to make them meet along the horizontal center of the coupler. The inside of the knuckle is slightly "humped" in the center. This makes the couplers "overriding" themselves on vertical transitions even greater, because when the couplers get slightly one above the other, this "hump" can cause them to lift apart under great stress (like 30 cars up a 3.4% grade, don't ask me how I know!).

Anyway, a small needle file on the inside of the coupler to flatten out the inside makes a large difference.

Regards, Greg

 

[Chucks_Trains]

Greg, That's a good catch as it's something I've seen but it never dawned on me as being a factor..

Couplers failing happen in the 1:1 world too..

Al Krug

 

[Greg Elmassian]

Spent many an hour watching them, and I torture test stuff, I keep adding cars until something derails or disconnects. I stop when 40 cars runs for 7 hours straight...

Of course, long passenger cars with body mounts added a new dimension over 40' freight cars!

Regards, Greg

 

[Ted Doskaris]

I now have more than 300 cars & locos - mostly Aristo with their standard knuckle couplers - so changing to anything else is not too inviting.

But like Greg pointed out much earlier in this thread, I have found Aristo's more recent products to be very frustrating in that the couplers tend to pull apart (not unlatch) much too soon.
I first noticed it on the relatively new GP40s. Aristo's quality control seems to have worsened to the point of retrograding to old problems.
The same is with the 40 foot type freight cars now reverting to their floor assemblies being wrongly oriented (installed backward), too - a practice that had gone on for more than a decade and for awhile - it seemed Aristo fix it until the latest factory move took place.

The next time Aristo makes a change to these floor assemblies, they should key them so this can't happen - and hopefully the key would be put in the correctly!


-Ted

 

[eheading]

Well, I guess even after 5 years, I'm still in the "beginning" stage with my railroad. I have converted some cars from plastic wheels to steel wheels, and will over time add more, but not real rapidly due to the cost. Regarding couplers, I early learned that mixing manufacturers' couplers was not real successful for me. Since the majority of my rolling stock is Aristocraft, I basically standardized on the Aristo truck mounted coupler. They work very well for me. I rarely have a problem with up to 35 or so cars, which is about as long a train as I pull. On the rare occasion that do have a coupler start disconnecting, I just replace it. For me with my rather poor trackwork, the Aristo's work well and are very "forgiving"!

Ed

 

[aceinspp]

Hay Ed welcome to the forum. Glade to see you are having good success with your AC couplers. BTW the you can mention any manufacture you want with out having the thread locked.

Later RJD

 

[Joe Mascitti]

Yes, the GP-40's are a nightmare....what solution did you come up with Ted....

 

[Ted Doskaris]

None so far, Joe.

What I have been considering doing is to try Kadee couplers on the loco providing they will mate with the Aristo ones.
(Can anyone who has retrofitted Kadees to the Aristo GP40 identify the best one (number) to use and what other parts - if any - are needed?)


But my trains are waiting until I finish with my Kitchen bay window project. Working on the house is like that PBS James Burke Connections series - one thing always leads to another, and another, etc.

Anyway, the bay window will enhance the viewing of my eventual outdoor layout - which is one of the reasons why I decided to do it. I envision sitting at the Kitchen table with an Aristo Train Engineer controlling the trains outdoors.

-Ted

 

[Tom Lapointe]

Last year, in response to some questions on Kadee's, I produced a couple of "YouTube" video's demoing their use on Large Scale equipment

- so here they are!

Hope those will answer some of your questions!

Tom

 

[StanleyAmes]

One concept on coupler types is the amount of slack action.


As mentioned earlier having couplers with slack can add additional enjoyment to operations.

Many do not like coupler slack but I love it. Therefore I use the body mounted 830 coupler. This is especially useful when you have pusher service as you can easily judge where the slack is and therefore how much work the pusher is doing.


Stan Ames
http://www.tttrains.com/sjrp/

 

[markoles]

I have had no problem with Aristo knuckles. I also like LGB's knuckles, but they are hard to find now. The only experience I had with Kadee couplers on my railroad showed me that unless I wanted to rebuild the whole thing, I should stick with what works for me. Truck mounted, oversize knuckles. Not impressed with the USA knuckles, had a pair of USA 44 tonners keep separating when trying to handle a long train.

 

[Trains West]

having come from smaller scales the Kadee is it for me .......


the video is good but on manual uncoupling rather then lifting the car I use a long reach flat blade screwdriver ... you just stick it in the center between the to couplers and give it a twist and they pop apart with out the car ever leaving the rail or touching anything but the screwdriver .... so you can spot a car anywhere you can reach.....

 

[Guest]

With having about the same amount of cars over 300 like Ted and over 50 engines, i have found kadees the only way to go. aristo couplers always failed for me when pulling more than a couple of cars, USA worked much better but when backing a train they derailed a lot of the time. the only factory installed couplers that seemed to work for me were the USA diecast couplers,they stayed coupled and you could back a train without problems, i have kept them on all my USA passenger cars because they work and the passenger cars will always run together.by the time i sold most of my aristo couplers to people that wanted them i was able to kadee a car for under 2.00 a car. kadees are the best for running train hassle free, not very hard to install, i use the larger kadee

.
Nick..