Its a YAY for me. Especially when you can…
wave a wand and uncouple any where you want.
Problem is… Im having a hard time convincing Kadee to ‘bend the pin’ the other way! [(-D]
Oh well, atleast no more between the rails magnets or under the track.
**(not absolutely true, you cant wave a wand over a car deep in the bowels of a hidden staging yard, or over pass car diaphrams, but you get the idea.)
No magentic couplers in the world of trains??? We’d be playing with model race cars!!!
PMR
Mine were $2 for 10, which would appear to be a third less expensive?
I never had much luck with just two. Not saying that it can’t work. I only found four to be more reliable.
Although, something I did notice is that the neodymium magnets are a little more aggressive than the Kadee magnets. The occasional spot too close to the magnets could make a steel axled truck jump back.
I never liked the Big Hand from the Sky for uncoupling. When I built my layout I used between the rails permanent magnets for stub sidings and a few electromagnets on the mains.
After a while, I got tired of not being able to uncouple where I wanted. I bought a bag of bamboo skewers. I’m much happier with those. I still have magnets in hard-to-reach places.
Note that the D14s in N42 are a little cheaper per 10 and might have enough distributed field if arranged correctly:
https://www.kjmagnetics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=D14
Remains to be established whether your ‘two’ are as effective as his four: the correct price comparison is ‘per effective uncoupler location’… net of shipping.
I designed my layout to utilize skewers. A few are quite a reach, but I have long arms. I rely on delay-drop at several locations where the terrain favors it, very useful when your main yard lead is within easy reach and several industrial tracks leading from it are not.
By terrain “favoring” I mean the end location of the shove is either level to uphill. This helps keep the set in the couplers so the delay drop happens instead of inadvertent recoupling.
I do have one location where I use a 709, the HOn3 version of the between the rails magnet. That’s at the bottom of a 5% grade into the Crater Lake Stone Quarry loading track. It holds up to 3 of the quarry-to-mill service flats, most bashed from old shortie MDC flats. Service has been pretty darn reliable.
The uncoupler magnet is just under the front facing coupler on the first flat in view. To there it’s all downhill, then it levels out to give slack action for uncoupling over the magnet, so there needs to be coupled action until you get to the bottom to avoid a runaway. This difference in how useful different uncoupling strategies work is a good reminder to plan this carefully if you haven’t managed to abolish grades on your layout.
I have mentioned before the occassional problems I have controlling my right arm. Becuase of this, I will continue to use magnets because reaching into completed scenes with a skewer could become a disaster.
[:O]
-Kevin
I only use under-the-track magnetic uncouplers in yards and spur tracks. On the mainline I found they produce too many unwanted uncouplings and with both facing point and trailing point spurs, it would require lots of uncoupling points where magnets would be required. I use manual uncoupling there. Electromagents are expensive and bulky. I am considering them for one point where I need to uncouple passenger cars with diaphragms. I haven’t found a suitable manual method for uncoupling those.
I have no inclines and only use non-magnetic wheel sets. This greatly reduces unwanted uncoupling actions.
Simon
I also mark between the rail KD’s by using small diameter white styrene tubes to represent below grade utility lines such as natural gas, petroleum, & power lines that run adjacent to the tracks, the tops of the markers are painted orange, yellow, or blue accordingly, otherwise spotting cars on my switching layout would be extremely time consuming and not very prototypical. Bayway Terminal NJ
[Y]
My planned layout is 98% flat with two grades going only into staging.
The only magnetically excited pieces on my freight cars are the uncoupler trip pins. Weights, axles, details, etc are all non-ferrous like lead, brass, or bronze.
This does reduce unwanted uncouplings.
-Kevin
I was working as one of the yard masters during an operating session this past Saturday and experieced rather mixed results with the “between the rails” magnetic uncouplers installed on several spurs along the rear of the yard. We normally use picks to uncouple cars but the magnetic uncouplers on the rear spurs reduced the need to reach into the layout – or so I thought.
I was able to successfully uncouple cars over the magnets only about 3 out of 5 times. Some couplers just refused to let go. On the other hand, when I didn’t want cars to uncouple, they would also uncouple about 3 out of 5 times. It might be entertaining to use these uncouplers when operating solo, but I had road crews waiting while I switched their trains and could not take the time to rely on the magnetic uncouplers. I found it far more reliable to uncouple the car(s) I needed to drop off, then use my pick to place the couplers in the “delayed” position before I shoved the car(s) back into these spurs. This was a far more reliable and predictable approach. Unfortunately, I still had to deal with cars uncoupling over the magnets when I didn’t want them to uncouple.
I’ve noticed the Kadee passive magnet between the rails uncoupler requires pretty exact car placement to work reliably. Just a bit too far or not quite far enough over the coupler and the results are spotty.
I intend to mark the sweet spot with a post or something similar, assuming my observations are correct and not imaginary.
Ironic since the device is intended to use while the operator is “very far away” which makes precise car positioning more difficult.
The under the rails one works reliably.
My prior layout, all locations were accessable by hand, so I always used the uncoupling pics.
Next layout just might have a electro-magnet on a passing “run-around” siding…
For me, it’s nay.
I used between the track uncouplers but they caused more unwanted uncouplings than wanted!
I removed these and started using the Rix uncoupling tool. As someone else mentioned, it immediately wants to grab the nearest handrail, grab iron, etc.
I switched to the bamboo skewer. Price was right, uncoupling was easy.
I now clip the pin from all couplers. I add brake hoses to all cars and I didn’t like the look of the extra pin.