Hi all,
I received my copy of the January '09 issue of O Gauge Railroading magazine today. The issue has a six page article on MTH’s R&D center in Michigan. One of the highlights of the article is the first look at their new HO operating coupler that’s coming on their SD70ACe’s. The article mentions that they are using muscle wire in place of the knuckle spring to open and close the knuckle. There’s a small photo of the coupler as well. It looks pretty much like a standard Kadee coupler. In the photo a person is holding the coupler in his fingers so it difficult to see how the coupler will mount but it may well fit in a typical draft box.
All in all it was a nice article. Most of the focus was on upcoming changes to MTH’s DCS system. That doesn’t mean much for the HO market but it’s very important in O where DCS and Lionel’s TMCC/Legacy systems dominate command control. There were a few other things mentioned that applied to HO. One of the new features they’re working on is a unit that outputs white smoke (steam) through the whistle while it’s blowing. They demoed this feature on a G-gauge engine a year ago but have now refind it to emit “steam” in a more prototypical fashion and to fit in smaller scales. Anyway, for those who are interest you might want to pick up a copy of OGR.