Ok so here goes, my first “annoyed rant” online post. Bear with me, I’ll get to the point eventually.
Anyone who has/has had any cheapo Life Like train cars will know what I’m talking about- I’ve got a handful of them that I’ve collected when I was younger before I realized what a “good” rolling stock car was. I eventually decided to convert all of the horn-hook couplers to knuckle couplers in my fleet, and those gave me problems. I have knuckle couplers installed in them right now, but because of the design of the Life-like cars there is a whole lot of slack in the couplers.
Last year (October mailing issue) from Walthers I saw that the new train sets from Life-like were coming with prototypical knuckle couplers. Underneath the sets I noticed that they had advertised those couplers for sale to use on “your old Life-Like cars” to be compatible with the new sets. I thought hot dang, I’ve been looking for something like that for years.
I logged onto walthers.com and they were back-ordered till after Christmas. I waited till after Christmas and just checked again, still out of stock. Today I checked the website and they are back-ordered till after March! I don’t know what’s going on. I even went as far as emailing Walthers to see what is going on; why they are on so far back order and when they’ll be available; still no reply.
When you order Chineese, you gotta’ wait for the 6 year olds to make it!![:-^] There is no such thing on a firm date on anything coming from overseas - you want cheap, let them make it - not American workers!![:-,]
I’m not defending Walthers, but is seems there is obviously something wrong in their supply chain for the couplers. Either they never got the original order mentioned in the flyer, or perhaps they all sold out. The fact thar they don’t have any to supply you is probably not their fault. Delivery problems, manufacturing problems, etc. You seem to be taking their being out of stock as something personal against you. Rest assured they’d rather sell you something than tell you it is on backorder.
Don’t know how long you’ve been in the hobby, but this isn’t anything new. Someone makes an estimate when supplies will arrive, and they don’t. Happens all the time. Whenever I’d see a new model advertised as being available “in the upcoming fall”, I’d always assume it really would not be available until late the following spring at the earliest. Seemed to work most of the time.
So I’d suggest that you hurry up and wait like the rest of us! It’s the nature of most hobby items and isn’t really anything to get worked up about.
What I meant was the SceneMaster couplers in HO. They have been featured in the monthly publication 3 times now and they still aren’t in stock. I forgot to mention that.
Try waiting over a year for a QSI sound decoder, all you need to do is go to Kadee’s website and you can download FOR FREE a pdf file that has a conversion chart for just about every piece of rolling stock and locomotive ever made back to when God was a kid and dirt was new giving you a part number for the conversion coupler. If everything else fails cut the coupler box off with an xacto knife and put on a good old KaDee #5 coupler and box combo. I must have put coupler on 200 cars and haven’t had a problem yet. Walthers is no different then anyone else when it comes to supply and demand
Yeh, it looks like the scenemasters are to adapt right into the old horn hooks. Very true if things are China made, their going to be made in big one time batches and shipped by ship in containers and that takes time. If your train operating demands are usually shortish trains say 20-30 cars with minimum grades you may be OK with non-kadee couplers. Kadee compatible knuckle couplers are virtually coming standard now with commercial train sets and cars and equipment.
But if your going for looooong trains you better go to kadees as the non kadees are plastic and break and cannot take the real stress we real model railroaders do to trains. My BLI-PCM Y6b came with, guess what, KADEES. Smart for them. All metal loco made to haul heavy coal drags and thats what I will be doing.
Any train has slack in the couplers but there are the no-slack prototype coupler design. Something you have to deal with, just like the prototype.
I tend to believe like train sets to be put together by kids they are going to put cheapo plastic couplers in them, mostly for rough treatment they might get and they may break easy, but its a cheap fix with the plastic coupler.
Perhaps you want to stick with the Scenemaster, but from the all model railroaders here, your better…
Just buy McHenrys and use a piece of 1/8" round styrene with a 1/16" hole in the middle as a shim to take the slop out.(a Q-tip shaft works well) Those Scene Masters are plastic anyhow. A McH #51 is what you’d want. (#41 for scale size)
If those old Life Like cars have the couplers mounted on the trucks (ie they turn with the trucks), I would suggest you mount your favorite coupler (KD, McHenry, Intermountain, etc) to the body of the car. This will give you much better operating reliability, notably when pushing the cars as compared to pulling them.
Then you do not have to wait till these special conversion couplers are on stock and you can proceed as you need to.
Another alternative would be to make an adapter car up with a Kadee on one end and a horn hook on the other end. Con to this is a body mounted coupler hooked to a truck mounted coupler is subject to derailment of the car.
I hear ya on that one. In the meantime what might work is using a set of kadee #28 couplers. They were made for old style talgo equipment and also have adapters to convert the draft gear boxes on the trucks.
