It’s been awhile since I’ve used magnetic uncouplers, so I was reading up on the Kadee website to figure out where they should be placed in the track configuration. Everything makes sense, except for one statement in the Kadee guidelines:
“Another thing to remember is to allow enough room between the Kadee uncoupling ramp and the switch to pull your average size train far enough away to clear the switch. This will allow you to take cars out of the middle of the train, drop them, and go back to pick up the rest to be on your way.”
That quote is the last paragraph in this document: http://www.kadee.com/html/delay.pdf
I’ve tried to think through this several times and I just can’t figure out what they mean. Their diagrams show uncoupling ramps near switches on yard leads etc. How far does the ramp actually need to be from the switch? One car length? Enough for a few cars? A whole train length? I’m confused.
Can anyone help to explain this to an uncoupling newbie? Thanks.
depends - you need enough room on a “dead-end” track for the loco(s) and car(s) that are attached to the car(s) you want to put on a siding.
if you’re pulling the center car out of a 3-car train, you’ll need enough room for the loco and the 2 cars to pass beyond the points (we’ll leave the other one beyond the frog), (delay)uncouple, throw the points, back into the siding, pull forward (back onto the main), get past the points, throw the points, reverse back to couple to the car that was uncoupled before and couple to it, and the go on your merry way.
As you can see, it would be drastically different that pulling, say 5 cars out of the middle of a 20-car long train with 4 locos on point…
There’s another point to consider. Kadee magnetic uncoupling doesn’t work reliably unless you have a straight section on either side of the magnet. This should be as long as the longest car or engine you plan to uncouple there, if you are using body-mount couplers. I make the exception for truck-mounted couplers, which only need the length of the truck on either side of the magnet.
You need this because the whole thing only works if the couplers are all lined up nicely. If one of the cars is at an angle, then the coupler can’t be pulled all the way over and won’t dis-engage, or it will “spring” to the other side and the delayed action won’t work right.