I was wondering if it really makes a difference to have all my cars the official N scale weight. And if so what is that weight? Also does it help to have the same couplers on all the cars Kadee, Micro trains etc.
Here is the link to the weight standards from the NMRA http://www.nmra.org/beginner/weight.html and in HO, what I model, it helps a lot. A light weight car can get pulled off the track if is closer to the front of a train with heavier cars trailing behind it.
There are some modelers, and serious ones at that, who do not accept or use the NMRA car weight standards. But as a rule, they DO try to adopt a set of car weighting standard of their own and stick with it. The real problem is from seriously inconsistent car weight standards on the same layout – it can be an invitation to derailments, even with deep flanges. The advantage to using the NMRA standards is, first, they are time tested and work, and second, you can interchange cars with other guys and have confidence when you buy cars built to NMRA standards.
Having said that, all of us likely have to accept that some cars, such as flat cars, gondola cars, some hopper cars, ore cars, and unloadeded intermodal cars, might be a challenge to weigh to NMRA standards. If they aren’t off by much and if they have a reasonably low center of gravity, they should operate just fine. The broader the curves the better.
Dave Nelson
There are some answers as to weight, I’ll try to address couplers. Any information I have seen (I’ve paid most attention to HO in the past) is that couplers of the same brand work best together, but some brands do fairly well when mixed. Some depends on how long (heavy) your trains will be. From the comments I have seen, metal couplers work best, plastic clones seem to give out sooner. There again it depends on stress put on them and the amount of usage they get.
Good luck,
Richard