What to do when your non-metal coupler has lost its spring. You know the old McHenry, Bachman, Intermountain. When your rolling stock was in the box in transit and you get to the show and the coupler lost its grip or its springiness and you look at it closely and that little hair like structure is bent away just enough where it won’t strike the coupler neck to close the coupler. What do you do, and all that you have left is the old NMRA- RP coupler. Well, with a little experimentation I found out you can couple the Kadee and the NMRA coupler, and you can save that McHenry. By cutting of the long beak-like structure from the top (uncoupler handle, the horn hook) and the uncoupling portion on the bottom of the old RP coupler, then file the surfaces smooth in and out of the actual coupler, guess what? They couple and run and don’t come-un coupled! Now as far as those fancy Delren plastic knuckle couplers; if the whiskers for the spring action become non functional, you can drop on drop of CA where the plastic hits the shaft as the spring, and yes more than likely this will glue the knuckle joint, but the coupler is still functional as long as the knuckle is closed. You can manually lift the car up and align the couplers and slide the couplers together and they will work. Since there is no coupler or spring action they will not un-couple. You will have to manually lift one of the cars to do that. But with either system you can use the old and even salvage the new and still run trains. And that’s what it’s all about.
Yard Operator
WTRR
Ah yes.
Kaydees, that what I do.
Now if RTR manufactors will install Kaydees for the extra 1.50 or whatever thier cost is we would not have to deal with all of that pain and tears when the plastic ones lose it.
I have only had one Kaydee Failure in 30+ years and that was because of a favorite car where it lost it’s spring. It was perhaps 5 seconds to stab a replacement with the knive and drop it in.
Another consideration is that my BLI engines working together generates like a pound of pull versus up to 8 pounds of train. I dont know the math that well but Kaydees are STRONG. Plastic aint got what it takes.
I would never go to a show to run with anything but a KD. That being said, you can carefully slip a KD knuckle spring on that whisker so that it catches the edge of the knuckle and it works again, at least good enough to stay coupled for the show.
Use a pair of tweezers to bend the finger in to the gap behind the knuckle…it will get you through the show. The replace the plastics with Kadees.
I pull the pins out of the plastic clones, remove the knuckle and use the rest as a socket for roosters on my lumber company’s log cars.
Now you know why I use only KDs. I have a lot of rolling stock on the way to the RIP track to have the plastic couplers replaced. I have had a lot of them break, but I operate 30++ car trains.
JIM