I’ve been out of the hobby for several years due to moving to several new homes since my last model railroad build. All of my boxed up equipment is fairly old and it all has horn hook couplers. I intend to eventually convert over to knuckle couplers, but it may be awhile. I am also eyeing some newer motive power and rolling stock, most of which now comes with knuckle couplers. My question is; Will knuckle couplers mate up with the horn hook couplers of my existing equipment?
No unfortunately they won’t. Horn hook couplers are very seldom seen anymore. I think some new models come with them in the package but almost everything comes with some brand of knuckle couplers factory installed. What you can do while you are changing couplers is have a car that has one knuckle and one horn hook coupler so that you can run trains with cars that have either type of coupler on them.
Hmmmm… I doubt it. you might be able to stick them to the knuckle couplers if you tried hard enough but I think you’d just end up with broken couplers. I had this problem on my small n scale layout.
Sorry, not really. IT is worth the effort though. You can get 20 packs of Kadee #5’s that will work in most applications. Then it’s a matter of looking specifically at each engine and car for the right one.
Unless your rolling stock is really high quality, if the change over to knuckles is difficult, it might be worth your time and money to buy newer cars to replace those cars instead of converting them. I’m referreing to the cheap Tycos, Life Likes, and Bachmann’s.
How old is “fairly old?” And again, who made the cars?
My stuff had been in boxes for 40 years. I found that Athearn cars, even very old ones, could be updated by simply removing the cover to the coupler pocket, replacing the horn-hook with a Kadee #5, and replacing the cover. The rest, though, require some degree of effort and ingenuity. On a lot of them, I end up completely removing the old coupler pocket and replacing it with a Kadee “Draft Gear Box,” which is the more appropriate term for “coupler pocket.”
A lot of old-time stuff had the couplers mounted on the trucks, rather than on the car body. This presents a problem, because this configuration doesn’t work very well either with horn-hooks or with knuckles. In particular, it’s hard to back up a train with these things. So, you will likely want to “body-mount” the new couplers (and the draft gear box) after removing the old coupler assembly from the trucks.
Long cars, like passenger cars, will not work well with body-mount couplers if you have tight curves. For these, I’ve left the couplers truck-mounted, and just replaced the boxes and couplers.
Old engines probably aren’t worth the effort. New engines are just so much better, in every way.
Most of my rolling stock is cheap stuff such as Bachmann and Lifelike. My motive power for the most part is Athern and a couple of Bachmann engines. My wife will love to hear that I need to buy all new equipment…NOT!
Don’t try to save a few dollars. If you are going to the trouble of replacing couplers use the best…Kadee. Only a few cents more thah the others. Jerry
Well you can sell the old stuff on eBay and use the money to upgrade.
Unfortunately, the cheap stuff is the hardest to convert to knuckles. Go to a train show, you’ll be surprized how inexpensive cars with knuckles already on them can be–especially if you shop for used ones.
Use your eBay money.
http://www.girr.org/girr/tips/tips2/kadee_tips.html
This site will probably answer most of the questions that you WILL have once you start converting to the Kadee’s.
WRONG!!! Nothing wrong with converting your old stuff over to Kadee’s. It’s NOT difficult and only costs about $1/per car/loco.
Change em to knuckles, but in the meantime you can make a tranistional car with 1 knuckle and 1 horn hook coupler. Then you can run old stuff with new until you get them all changed over. Kadee are the easiest to obtain and are a reasonable price for knuckle couplers. Sargeant are more to scale but they do not mate with the other makes of knuckle couplers and have to be uncoupled by hand. Also more expensive. If you have a bunch of old Bachmann stuff you may want to change trucks as well. Their couplers are truck mounted and may be a real pain to change.
rlundy90-I just cut the truck mounted coupler pocket off and use a body mounted draft gear box. You usually run into more trouble trying to get an after market truck to fit and work properly on the cheap cars. I’m all for changing the wheel sets, but I found changing trucks was more of a pain than it was worth.[2c]
Step 1 might be to create some “transition” cars. Change some to knuckle couplers on one end only, leaving the other end horn-hook. It will be a little pesky for a while, because you’ll need to use one of these cars between strings of knuckle-coupler-equipped cars and older cars, but it will allow you to run both in trains and to use newer cars behind engines still equipped with horn-hooks. Then once you’ve covnerted or upgraded everythign, you can go back and complete the conversion on the transition cars.
Creating transition cabooses is also a good idea … horn hook on one end, knuckle on the other. Then they can be on the end of any train.
Edit: I see RLundy posted the same idea while I was typing.
Byron
Model RR Blog
athearns a snap the other stuff would probly require some work
No problem…You have a choice…Take one car and add a knuckle coupler on one end and a X2F on the other…There you have a conversion car and can change couplers as you will…
Of course you can still replace the cheap knuckle coupler with the horn hook.Its your call.
BTW…There are still modelers that still uses X2F couplers.
When you do pick a car to use with different couplers on opposite ends, try to choose one which will be easy to identify quickly. Trying to figure out which car in a string of identical black hoppers marks the transition from X2F to knuckles can be a major PITA. It’s a lot easier if it’s the only four-bay in a string of two-bays.
OTOH, if you are going to run cars in cuts, and haven’t encountered derailment problems, you can install knuckles at both ends of each cut and leave the interior couplers X2F. I do something similar with my unit coal trains - MKD-5s on the ends, ancient Kadee K couplers (without trip pins) in between.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
You can also throw a handful of “Universal couplers” in your tool box and use them for coupling any cars together that do not have mating couplers installed.
I get one Universal Coupler with every loaf of bread and package of buns I buy. I also get a small packet of them in every box of trashbags.
Some folk call these things “Twisty Ties” but they are actually “Universal Couplers”.
How’s the slack run out on those universals?[:D]
Enjoy
Paul
If you get too much slack action, you just twist them some more!
I had an Athearn GP with a KD on one end and a horn on the other untill I got all my cars changed over.
I don’t really remember the horn hooks coming uncoupled or giving me any problems. Didn’t have to worry about coupler height with them either.[%-)]