I’m a father of 4 who recently dug my 60-70’s vintage HO train sets out of my Dad’s attic, planning to have them running around the Christmas tree. The “big kids” (10 and 12) are going to help me put together a small layout to surprise the “little kids” (6 and 7).
So far, I got the locomotives cleaned up and running. I can greatly increase my amount of useable rolling stock if I can replace all the broken couplings. I’ve read enough here to know that I have horn hook couplings. Since this will be a Christmas-tree RR rather than a scale model, realism is not terribly important. How does one replace these broken couplers?
I’ve also read a lot of “horn hook bad/Kadee good” discussion. For a 2-weeks-a-year kind of layout with short trains and no grades, I doubt I need metal Kadee-type longevity. However, would plastic knuckle-style couplers provide more reliable operation than horn hooks?
Finally, a bit of on-line browsing has revealed a frightnening number of different couplings. How can I tell which ones will work on my old generic cars?
Two years ago, I started re-building a set of trains that had been in boxes for 40 years, a few years older than yours, but not all that much. I’ve replaced a lot of couplers, and the one thing they all had in common was that every one was an “engineering challenge.” There’s no simple way to do this with old rolling stock, and there are as many different situations as there were manufacturers back then.
Even so, I would suggest replacing them all with the good brand, Kadee. The process is very labor intensive, and the parts cost is small compared to the amount of time it will take to replace a “difficult” coupler installation. (Once you get used to it, you can do these in about 15-20 minutes on pretty much any car, including those where you need to slice metal things apart in a shower of sparks with a Dremel.)
Hopefully, this will not just be a 2-weeks-a-year thing. If all 4 boys enjoy the trains, you’ve found a hobby which can last for many years and be a lot of fun for the whole family, all year long. Look around for train shows and train club open houses, which tend to happen around this time of year. This will give you and the boys an idea of what can be done.
It depends on what type/model cars you have. Tyco used a tab that held the coupler by a hole in it’s shank. Bachmann used one at that time in which the coupler was held on by a small screw. As Mr B said, it would probably be easier to convert to Kadee couplers. That’s what I ended up doing with mine.
As Jeffery said above, your cars aren’t “generic” they were made by some manufacturer which will give you a guide to replacement couplers. Look on the bottom of the cars for a brand name of some sort. Also, if the locomotives are all the same brand (name possibly on the bottom again), there’s a chance your father bought the trains as sets, and the cars are the same brand.
There are a few alternatives for the Christmas layout.
You could replace a series of broken/missing couplers with a pair of the knuckle couplers which may give you some “spare” horn hooks to replace on some of the cars. Then you would need to create a “transition car” with a horn hook on one end and a knuckle on the other to put together a complete train.
You could make a permanent draw bar between cars with missing couplers as a unit train using some plastic card stock, like your friendly bank includes in credit card offerings.
Good luck with the under tree extravaganza, hope all the kids, small, medium and large enjoy playing with trains over the holidays, and if you find it fun, stop back for more ideas.
Oh, no - I can’t do that. Those fake credit cards have an important use: they’re the tool of choice for scraping finger-fug off guitar fretboards.
Thanks for the suggestions, all. I’ll take a look tonight and see what sort of cars I have. I think they’re mostly Tyco, but the sets were supplemented with a few extras.
Unfortunately each brand of car can be different, so each how it different.
No for your situation I think the horn hooks will work fine. I used them for over 20 years.
Unfortunately most vendors had their own internal mounting/springing method. So the best thing to do would be find a web site like the one below that has pictures of them, and match by the picture.
P.S. Where do you live? I have bunches of couplers I’ve taken out of my cars when I converted them to knuckle type. I keep them for people in your situation. If you can let me know the car manufacturer or e-mail me (click the Texas Zepher name on the upper left of the message for more informaiton) pictures of the hooks I’ll see if I have a replacement that I would be glad to send you as many as you need.
[#ditto] Yea, if you dont mind giving us a way to send them, I too have not quite a bazillion, maybe a half a bazillion, but I could send you some that might fit. Kadee now has the new whisker couplers that may just slip right it where to old couplers used to go. At least try a set and see how they work.
They are metal couplers but have whiskers so you don’t have to use the brass spring in the coupler which allows the coupler to go off center on curves and then spring back to the straight position on straight track.
I like the Christmas tree aspect. This year we put up a G guage railroad and the kids love it. In the past it was Lionel. Remember you can’t use the old track that came with the set, directly on the rug, it will need to be on a piece of plywood or something so the rug doesn’t get tangled in the track and the engines. You could use the new track from Bachman, it is a little heavier duty and less likely to break when pulling or putting the track together. The Atlas track with the road bed tends to break, that is the connecting tabs are very fragile and tend to snap off when you are pulling the track apart.
Thanks to everyone for your generous offers of bazillions of horn hooks. I fear they might not get here before Christmas, though, so I’ll see if I can get some from my local shop at lunchtime today. If not, I may take you up on it.
I won’t try to run the trains on the carpet - even though this is a temporary setup, I built a 4x6 plywood platform. It has a reinforced area with a 4" riser to support the tree - I discovered our artificial tree hangs so low it would prevent you from seeing the trains, so it gets a pedestal so raise it a bit. Gotta get busy…
Bachmann makes a product called I think “Mate-a-matics” that I have used in the past. They couple to both horn hooks and knuckle style couplers. They are pretty cheap, and should more than fit the bill for what you intend to use them for. I bought some a few years ago to use to replace broken couplers I had on some old cars and some passenger stuff I had. I had picked up some similar cars that someone had added kadees to and I just wanted a cheap alternative. They work. Amazingly well.
Call the local hobby shops and see if they have them. The local shop may also have used stuff which you could pick up cheap.
Replaceing all of your couplers with KADees is a good idea. However, reality says you may not be able to accomplish this before Christmas. If you do want to accomlish this conversion, start out by installing the KD’s on only one end of a few cars. These could then be used as bridge cars to connect your horn hook cars with the KD cars. Later on, during the rest of the year, when you have had a chance to convert all of the rest of your cars and locomotives to KD’s, these bridge cars can get KD’s on both ends also.