I have run into two major type of couplers… in my first six months of model railroading… knuckle and horn hook. (I’ll leave for another discussion the various types/brands of knuckle couplers)
I’ve settled in on using knuckle couplers (seems to be the de facto type in cars and locomotives recently manufacturered) and have switched a few horn hooks (from older rolling stock) to knuckle… which has not always been easy as I’m sure you experienced model railroaders know.
My question is… why isn’t there a small ‘conversion’ piece one could affix “in-between” a horn hook and knuckle?
Life would be so much easier
Why not do what the big guys do and place one horn-hook at one end and a knuckle at the other?
https://columbusrailroads.com/pom-jun2009.htm
I ran that way for quite a while back in the '70s when I had not completely changed over to 99% Kadees.
Good Luck, Ed
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Way back when I was starting out, I went through the pain of converting from Horn hooks to knuckle couplers. For a while, I ran special cars with different couplers on either end to allow both types in the train.
But then I found that you could modify the horn hook to mate with the knuckle couplers as a temporary expediency until you got the actual knuckle coupler to put in. You could trim that horn hook coupler down by removing the big wing sticking out to the side from the knuckle, trimming off the bottom pin, and removing the spring that pushed the coupler off one side. Then you could whittle and trim until you got the remaining couple to fit inside a knuckle coupler.
It wasn’t the best in the world, but you could couple the cars with differing couplerstogether by hand and run a train without having to spend all your money on everything at once. And the price was right! Free!
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Also… finally ordered one of these… (workbench mounted magnifier)
those darn knuckle coupler springs are awfully tiny to work with!
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To make the knuckle springs slightly easier to install put a tiny dab of almost any kind of glue (I use white glue) on the pin closest to the coupler shank. Place the spring on this one pin and let the glue dry. Then when you go back to get the spring onto the pin on the movable knuckle the spring can’t launch itself toward the moon.
Mark Vinski
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It wouldn’t stay up by itself, and if you made it so it would stay engaged in buff it would be twiddly to uncouple. It would also put way too much room between cars and complicate going around curves.
The approach used back in the days before the NMRA “stsndardized” on horn hooks and Kadee won out over the various alternatives for knuckles is still the ‘right’ way to do this: have a ‘transition car’ with one end horn-hook and the other some flavor of Kadee. This easily lets you set the coupler box heights easily to give proper engagement and swing for both types, and you can reasonably easily learn to use a bamboo skewer or dental pick as an uncoupling tool.
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I did that as well back in the early 1980s when money was tight and I couldn’t afford to put KDs on every car. Since I didn’t do any switching with my passenger cars, mostly Rivarossi, I left the horn hooks on them except for the front end of the RPO or baggage/express, whichever one would be at the head end of the consist.
As for the OPs question about why there isn’t a conversion piece, my guess is that there wouldn’t be enough of a demand for it to make it profitable. I can’t remember the last time I bought a loco or a new piece of rolling stock that didn’t come with a knuckle coupler. A few also still include a horn hooks. I wonder what percentage of modelers have stuck with the horn hooks. As for me, I always replace the knuckle couplers with a KD anyway so it doesn’t matter to me what the manufacturers put on their equipment. I’ve never seen a car or loco that came with a KD from the factory.
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That’s a great tip. I think the modern term for that is a hack. I always figure I need 3 springs for every one I replace because 2 are going to end up on the floor. Next time I have to replace a spring, I’ll give that a try.
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I’d be using a transition car, too.
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Transition cars aren’t such a great idea if you switch a lot and if where individual cars are routed matters . They’re really more suited to continuous running layouts. I did them for a little while, but ended up trimming my horn hooks as I detailed a couple of posts back. It took a couple of years to get rid of them all, but it was worth it.
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I recently read about installing Kadee coupler springs inside a big ziplock/baggie. That way when they jump, they are contained, and you’ll find them again.
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To an old guy like me, the word “hack” will never mean a meaningful bit of information like the word “tip”does. “Hack” will always define an incompetent moron at some task, terribly destructive cutting of some kind, or, in forgotten Railroad slang, a caboose.
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And… work inside a large clear Baggie when doing anything involving small or energetic parts…
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That is true; I’d simply go about replacing them all too. Actually, I do wonder if there would be a way to make a transition piece…
You could 3D-print a piece that would press over the top of a horn-hook with a short shank and knuckle projecting at the correct height. If you make the horn-hook-shaped recess fairly deep, you could use simple shims to adjust coupler height.
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Nobody ever mentions the Hobbyline split knuckle couplers that John English designed back in the 1950s. Hobbyline engines and cars produced from about 1953 to about 1957 came with them. They were a bit larger than the other knuckle couplers Varney, Mantua, Athearn and others experinented with, but if you go down to your local rail yard and study the real life couplers, Hobbyline’s were pretty accurate and the others were a bit too small. Hobbyline’s worked with a special track section with two lengthwise wires. You pushed the cars onto the wire track, then reversed direction and the couplers separated. As long as the train kept moving in one direction or the other the couplers stayed connected. So you installed a wire track on each siding where you anticipated doing some switching. You didn’t need any electrical hookups, any holes drilled below the platform, or any button to push. It was a very clever adaptation. But when Lionel bought out Hobbyline they abandoned English’s split knuckle couplers and switched to the same ones everyone else was beginning to use. The Hobbyline split knuckle couplers were car (not truck) mounted and very stable. The only disadvantage was the piece extending downward, the piece activated by the wire track, does not look like a hose, like the ones on today’s standard knuckle couplers do. But that could have been an easy fix.
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If you look online at places like trainz.com or ebay you can find bachmann knuckle couplers for about a buck a pair. I’ve got about 10 cars I need to swap over and literally ordered 25 pairs that come with the centering spring already applied and everything.
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Hmm–that’s probably true. I did see a conceptually similar hookup for Lionel and Marx trains…
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I don’t use anything but Kadee. And I tend to have more success using their conversion list on the Kadee web site as a starting point instead of blindly sticking Kadee #5, #148, or #158 on everything. The Kadee web site has additional tips and .pdfs to help.
What does happen is that the particular model I have in my hand will either need an underset or overset coupler head compared to the center set recommendation. Seldom is the coupler box style wrong, so having a selection of couplers on hand is helpful.
HOn3 is a little more problematic, as the MicroTrains 1015/1016 series looked better than the Kadee HOn3 and didn’t have as much “slinky” action as the Kadee and MT 1023 series couplers. But MT is out of business now, bought out by Atlas, with no new manufacturing to date.
just my experiences
Fred W
…modeling foggy coastal Oregon in HO and HOn3, where it’s always 1900…
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