My buddies at the N-Trak club told me that the Kato N-scale coupers on my KATO F-40PHs have a tendency to derail cars since they don’t swing wide enough to allow the following cars to stay on the track. Can anyone confirm this?
They’ve also told me to replace the Kato couplers with Micro Trains couplers. All of my passengers cars have Micro Trains truck mounted couplers. Is this something you would recommend?
Irv
When I bought my Kato locomotives, the store owner told me Katos tend to derail the following car on small radius curves (9 3/4"). They work OK on larger curves. I found that my Kato SD 40-2 will derail the first car on tight curves if facing one way, but not if facing the other way. My smaller F7 seems to work OK even on tight curves. I’m new at model railroading so I don’t know about changing types of couplers on the engine.
I would standardize with MicroTrains couplers. They are time tested.
David B
I agree with everyone here. You should switch to MT couplers. I am in the process of switching a Kato SD-40 to MT couplers.
I have found in practice that the Kato locomotive couplers will swing the following car of the tracks nearly 100% of the time on my test oval which has 15" curves. I plan on replacing all of my Kato couplers with MT once they go into service on the “real” layout. Jamie
The Kato N scale couplers look good, but they don’t always work well and have trouble mating with others. I haven’t replaced mine but am considering doing so.
I’ve already ordered new ones. As soon as the arrive, I’ll see what I need to do to get them on the F-40PHs.
While I was looking at my N-scale stuff, I found an Arnold N-SCale Amtrak coach that I had never changed ove to Micro Trains couplers. I did the job this afternoon. It wasn’t easy as the Arnold wasn’t exactly described in the instructions. But I muddled thru. It’s amazing what comes back to you sometimes after 20 years. [swg]
Irv
I totally agree with everyone. Kato engines are generally very easy to convert to MTs, especially the modern models. The Magnetic action is pretty poor… sometimes it just won’t uncouple, sometimes it uncouples when you don’t want it to. Katos couple to Accumates fine and accumates to MTs just fine, but Katos don’t like MTs very much. I don’t recommend the accumates either… better than Katos but still uncouple way too easily over magnets. Just change everything to MTs!
They sure do. I put a magnet on a place on my mainline just to have it. I do sometimes regret this.
Everybody waited like vultures for those Kadee patents to expire with the expectation that they were going to reach in and capture the market; ain’t happened, has it? Old habits die hard! but I’m going to continue using N-Scale Kadees.