With the advent of new couplers from Kadee and others has anyone gotten serious about installing them on brass steamers…is it still a difficult job or has it become a bit easier with the new styles available.
There are a great many new styles of operating couplers, but it’s still no easy job. If you’ve got brass, then you’ve got almost a unique problem with each loco. I’ve installed working couplers in many of my brass locos, but there is no simple or universal solution to doing so. When I decide that a brass loco needs a working front coupler, I take the loco down to my LHS, start browsing through the Kadees. One might work, another won’t. Also, even though it looks as if the loco coupler casting is the right ‘height’, sometimes it isn’t, and you not only have to look for a coupler shank that will fit through the casting, you have to find out whether or not you need either a lowered coupler head or a higher coupler head.
'Tis a puzzlement, as they say. It can be done, but there’s no universal solution. Oddly enough, some of my older brass were able to be converted to Kadee #5’s, coupler pocket and all. Others, I had to forget about the coupler pocket entirely, and drill the shaft to fit the screw that held the dummy coupler in.
As I said, it can be done, but I’ve found that it’s individual to each locomotive.
Tom