Kadee uncoupling magnets- -Does polarity matter?

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

Hello all,

As you know magnets are polarized. Every magnet has a “+” and a “-”.

I was just wondering if those of you that do uses the Kadee uncoupling magnets; delayed or non-delayed, do you align you magnets so all the polarities match?

Or, do you just glue them down without regard to polarity?

Thanks for your input.

Post Script: Normally I would post this query to the Kadee forums but they seem to have vanished.

J.J.

2

Instructions don’t mention polatity

https://kadee.com/html/308ins.pdf

3

Yes.

Ed

4

While the magnets have polarity the glad hands on the coupler don’t.(otherwise they would be magnets too) So polarity does not matter.

I don’t think it even matters if you are installing rows of rare earth magnets that do the same thing as the K-D’s but are less visually intrusive. Thinking and knowing are different so I hedged my bet and installed those all + on one side of the track and all - on the other.

5

The Kadee magnets appear to be polarized narrow side to narrow side N to S. I dropped a ⅛” diameter Neodymium magnet on a Kadee magnet and it aligned it’s self side to side.

I do not think the magnet polarity makes any difference.

Mel

Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951

My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/

Bakersfield, Californi

6

I pulled all of those ugly things off of my track and stuck them on the refrigerator where magnets belong. They are nice for holding train schedules or other pieces of paper.

I use an uncoupling tool that I made following a design I read about in MR several years ago. It’s a piece of floral wire with a couple of 90 degree bends at the end stuck in the end of a pencil size wooden dowel. Some people use shish kabob skewers but I don’t like teriyaki weathering on my cars. LOL

With Kadee magnets just make sure the top side is up.

7

I removed the ones on my mainline a number of years ago because they were causing unwanted uncoupling. I find they are still useful on spurs and yard tracks. I use the under track magnets so they are not visible. I use bamboo skewers to uncouple in any place I don’t have a magnet. I had bought the KD uncoupling tool but was always misplacing it and bamboo skewers are cheap and plentiful. If I lose one, no big deal because I have lots more from the same package.