Hello to all, I’m new to the boards, been reading for a while but never joined until now. I had a question that needed answering and while I have done a lot of reading and research I thought I could speed things up by asking people with more experience than me.
I recently got into model railroading because of my young son. He’s autictic and loves trains more than anything else so his grandfather gave him an old 1980’s Lionel O gauge set for Christamas 2 years ago, which we love but because it’s so large we didn’t get it out very often. I ended up buying a Bachmann HO gauge set last year and he loves that even more. So that is what we are choosing to build on.
The set I got wa the Sante Fe flyer kit with a EMD FT diesel locomotive, a open quad hopper, gondola, and an off-set caboose. I also bought a few more cargo cars off of eBay to add to it but out of the 7 that I purchased, only 2 have the same couplers as the Sante Fe set.
These are whats on the Sante Fe set.
and as you can see on the underside the coupler is attacked and accessible on the body of the car.
the problem is the other cars I bought have this style of couple that do not hook up with the newer ones.
and they attach to the truck which just unsnaps from the entire car.
Can’t see any photos in your post so it is hard to give a good answer. It is possible to buy both replacement couplers and replacement trucks.
The knuckle-style couplers will all work together, after a fashion. They will not work with the stylized “X2F” coupler, which is a one-piece plastic molding with a round pin hanging straight down. The knuckle couplers have a moving knuckle, and some sort of a spring to hold them closed.
One solution is to cut the truck-mounted couplers off the trucks and replace them with body-mounted knuckle couplers. www.kadee.com has couplers, conversion kits, and some tables that tell you which couplers will work on most cars. Look at http://www.kadee.com/conv/hocc.htm
The cars you bought off of EBay have what is known as horn hook couplers. They were phased out about 20 years ago. And as you found out, they are not compatable with the newer couplers.
I would contact Kadee Couplers ( www.kadee.com ) about converting the EBay cars. To save money, you could just replace the horn hook coupler on one end of a car converting it to a transition car. This car would connect to your new set and allow the use of the EBay cars behind it.
May I suggest shopping at M.B.Klein ( www.modeltrainstuff.com ) for all things trains and avoid EBay like the plague. If you can build models from kits, Accurail and Bowser make some very reasonable priced freight cars. And, they are made in the USA.
I my experiance, it’s not worth the time or money to upgrade these very old train cars.
It is not a lost cause. The older less realistic couplers are sometimes called “horn hook,” sometimes called “X2F,” and sometimes called NMRA couplers because a committee of the National Model Railroad Association came up with the design but it never became a standard or recommended practice of the NMRA. Most train sets in HO came with those horn hook couplers from the mid 1950s to about 2005, and some continue to have them to this day.
The knuckle type couplers on your Santa Fe set are the way to go and the best ones are made by Kadee. A somewhat over sized version called the #5 is still very popular but Kadee has a vast array of them for all sorts of situations.
Since couplers mounted to the car bodies are just better running than those connected to the wheelsets, I suggest you snip off the horn hook couplers from those cars (snip or cut away right to the bolster, to make room) and purchase Kadee #5s that can be screwed or cemented to the car floor. It might be necessary to file or chisel away some of the floor detail so there is a perfectly flat surface to mount the coupler draft gear box. You will also want to make sure that
Thanks for the speedy advice. I’ve emailed kaydee to see what their recommendations are. Just for kicks, here are the the engine and cars from the set I bought. These are the modern couplers (obviously)
And these are from the lot I bought on ebay. Incidentally I got all of them for $9.00 but they do need a bit of work. 2 of them need new trucks.
I am considering just replacing one coupler on one car and using it to transition between the old and new. It will mean I can’t use my caboose but what the hey, it wouldn’t have a caboose anyway most likely these days. Maybe I’ll save the caboose for when I buy some coaches.
Not uncommon. The Ebay cars have the older X2F or “hornhook” couplers which used to be pretty standard, but have now been replaced with Kadee style knuckle couplers. You can order Kadee couplers that snap right into the truck mounts. You can also order the standard Kadee #5 coupler with coupler boxes, and mount said coupler boxes to the bottoms of your cars. Kadee is on the internet and they manufacture a vast variety of knuckle couplers to fit every piece of rolling stock manufactured over the last 60 years. They publish a long list of “what fits what” on they website. Look up the maker of your cars in the list and it will tell you which Kadee coupler with fit it. I have upgraded countless older cars to Kadee knuckle couplers, it ain’t hard.
A little history. In the dim beginnings of time, every model railroad company had it’s own proprietary coupler that would not intermate with any other makers couplers. Some time in the middle 1950’s two things happened. The NMRA devised the X2f coupler and made it available to the industry, and Kadee invented the magnematic knuckle coupler. The Kadee was the better coupler and all the serious model rails adopted it for their layouts. The industry liked the X2f coupler 'cause it was dirt cheap to make and woud not raise the price of kits or RTR rolling stock. From 1965 or so until the late 1990’s all commercial rolling stock was made and shipped with X2f couplers. Sometime in the late 1990’s the Kadee patents finally expired, and everyone in the industry started molding their own Kadee clone couplers out of plastic. By 2000, the X2f coupler was gone and everything shipped with clone Kadee couplers. The original Kadee company is still around and still sells plenty of couplers. The Kadee’s are generally considered the best, and last time I looked, didn’t cost any more than the clone couplers
That’s not $30 for a set, but rather bulk packs of 20 or 30 sets. Kadees generally sell for $2.50 to 3.00 a pair. Most of the clones go for less except the ProtoMax which are about the same as KDs.
Fantastic hearing that your son, who’s on the spectrum, loves trains. I work with special needs students so I definitely appreciate seeing the joy you son expresses around trains.
Yes, you can cut off the truck mounted coupler pockets; gear boxes, and body mount knuckle couplers. This can be time consuming and might require purchasing some specialized tools.
Making a transition car; Hook & Horn on one end and knuckle (Kadee) couplers on the other end, is always a good solution as long as you don’t want to switch; rearrange cars on the track.
Another solution is to keep the existing trucks and replace just the couplers. The type of trucks you are dealing with are know as Talgo. Kadee not only makes couplers they also make an adapter and insertion tool so you can keep the Talgo trucks and upgrade the couplers.
The down side of having truck mounted couplers is reversing movements; backing up, can be problematic and can cause derailments; the car(s) jumping off the tracks.
One item I would definitely recommend is a coupler height gage. I prefer the Kadee #206. This is a little tool that sits on the tracks and checks to see if all the couplers are at the same height. Very important!
This tool will also let you gage what type of coupler you will need.
After all this you might just find it easier to buy cars; rolling stock, with knuckle couplers already installed; no matter the coupler manufacturer. Most knuckle couplers are “Kadee Compatible.”
In the future, if you do decide to purchase rolling stock through eBay, make sure that the couplers are first of all body mounted; so you can swa
The combination truck-and-couplers are sometimes called “talgo trucks”. Kadee makes these, so you can just replace the existing trucks and add Kadee couplers all at once. Unless you’re interested in pre-WW2 railroading, you probably will want the Bettendorf or Vulcan trucks.
Kaydee has gotten back to me extremely quickly after I gave them the details they asked for. Customer service rep Sam recommended a #206 height gauge and #148 whisker coupler conversion kit since I prefer to mount the coupler to the body instead of leaving it on the truck.
You can’t go wrong with the #148 whisker coupler. I am actually, and gradually, replacing all others couplers, except Kadees #5 which are matching the #148 perfectly, with them.
