I was wondering if the Kadee shelf coupler is scale sized like the #58? I was thinking of getting a few to use as type H couplers for my passenger cars, but I’m not about to convert the fleet from #5’s to #118’s if the #118 is not scale sized. I couldn’t find any info on the Kadee website referring to these as “scale”.
As far as I know, since I have some, they are not scale sized. They have the same dimensions (except for the shelf part) as the #5 coupler.
No, but they sure do work.
Thanks for the info…too bad. The #5 and other standard Kadee’s just look too big in my opinion on the front of an Amtrak P42. Oh well, maybe Kadee will eventually release a scale sized H coupler, one that doesn’t require any cutting.
Kadee’s production capacity seems to be stretched to the max because they make so many different types of couplers. A few weeks ago they responded to a question here about whether they would produce the #148 Whisker coupler in a bulk pack by stating that they couldn’t make enough of them to do so until they installed more machines.
Yes,those 148s seems to be a hot item…Several of the club members has drop any future purchases of #5s for the 148.I will also be using the 148s instead of #5s for all future cars.
Brakie,
Maybe I have contributed to the shortage of #148s when I purchased 50 packs of them…
Is the #118 scale sized? In a word, no. I like the shelf coupler because they don’t slide up and out of each other. The regular scale size couplers don’t work well on my layout, primarily because my track has some dips and rises. These don’t bother the #5’s and similar sized couplers but due to the smaller size of the scale size couplers, they would slide above or below each other and come uncoupled, resulting in me going back to the old reliable #5.
Hello Group,
The Kadee #118 is “partially” scale size. The actual head is “scale” but the knuckle (moving part of the head) is a bit over scale and we used the larger knuckle to get it to actually function as a shelf coupler. In fact it’s the same knuckle we use on the #5 and all but our scale HO couplers, the #5 coupler is about 20% over scale. Unless you know enough about all the different types of couplers it’s easy to compare the #118 to a “scale” Type "E’ coupler and say it’s not to scale where in fact the head is scale but the knuckle is not. The Type E coupler has it’s versions of top and bottom shelves and they look quite dainty compared to the masive Type F and SF couplers.
Our #118 depicts a Type “SF” coupler and not the common (smaller) Type “E”. The SF coupler is a type F coupler with a top shelf. The Type F coupler is basically a Type “H” coupler with a bottom shelf and (looks wise) both can be refered to as the “Tri-Lock” or “Tight-Lock” coupler used on passenger cars. If you simply trim off the top shelf of the #118 it can be used for the Type F or Type H couplers and since you hardly can ever see the bottom shelf you can use the #118 as the Type H coupler without having to trim off the bottom shelf. We will not be making a Type H coupler, at least for a very long time, unless there is a tremendous demand for it.
As far as our “whisker” couplers are concerned, any new coupler we introduce will have a whisker center spring in the shank. We presently have 4 whisker couplers and many more on the drawing board waiting to be introduced. In order to keep up with these new designs we presently are “building” a new machine and when it is finished we’ll be able to introduce bulk packages of our whisker couplers and add more to the line. We will not give out a time frame when it will be finished so don’t hol
Assuming we are speaking about ho scale kadee’s #58 coupler is supposed to be the right size. If you are wondering they are significantly(sp?) smaller than the #5 coupler and they work well, all metal, and magnetic uncoupling. But of course unless you have an on track or handheld uncoupler the is no advantage to the magnetic uncoupling. though they have uncoupled on about 3 times for no appearent(sp?) reason.