Is our couplers.
Right now we can use magnets or poke them with sticks. The idea of putting a decoder in every car works, but if you have to dial the right two cars to get them to release with each cut, then it is NFG.
What we need is a coupler that will release as we wave a wand over it. That make take “smart” technology, but it won’t be as clumsy as dial-a-coupler.
That more or less already exists, if you use Kadee-style magnetic couplers:
http://www.rixproducts.com/6280014.htm
Steve
The Sergent couplers are exactly what you asked for (see http://www.sergentengineering.com/). Well, pretty close to what you asked for. To uncouple requires a magnetic force from above the coupler - could be awkward with passenger car diaphrams. The magnetic wand is easier than the mechanical skewer method for Kadee. Delayed uncoupling is accomplished by closing one or both knuckles and then pushing. Sergent couplers are HO scale size for the later prototype couplers. They are oversize (as are all but the MT N couplers) for the earlier MCB knuckles used at the TOC.
Biggest issue to me with the Sergents is the lack of a remote uncoupling scheme. I don’t like reaching in to my layout to do the uncoupling, or the coupler centering. However, setting up hidden magnetic uncoupling devices for Kadees, and making them work consistently with delayed uncoupling, automatic coupling, and no false uncouplings is not a trivial exercise, either.
my thoughts, your choices
Fred W
PS You will have to cut and paste the link. I can’t figure out to make a live link in Firefox.
Steve,
I’ve got one. The layout where I do ops has several–they sit on the bench. The most popular tool at this layout is the bent wire pick. On all the layouts I operate on, there is still a fair amount of lifting the cars with the 0-5-0 in frustration.
Sorry, but in my mind, the Rix tool isn’t good enough.
I agree on the Rix Tool
It also is a pain when you have two old all metal box cars you’re trying to seperate
My thought on the technology bottleneck is the present limitation of small speakers to deliver good bass for engine sounds. We have fabulous opportunites even with present decoders, but if the speaker sounds like crackling cellophane it is of no value. If the music industry can produce good sound in earphones, why not in locomotive models? That is the next big challenge.
There are three options presently available for uncoupling: permanent magnets, electro-magnets, various picks/skewers.
jc5729 John Colley, Port townsend, WA
We have been able to get 3 speakers in the long hood of the CF7 body and the bass is greatly improved.
This is with off the shelf oval speakers. We are planning on installing 4 of the speakers to get the ohms up to the required 32 ohm of the sound decoder. But as it is right now everyone that hears the engine are impressed with the bass sound.
What I don’t understand is the reasoning that these little HO sound units are supposed to put out the bass volume of the real thing.
We are usually standing 2 feet away from the engines when they are on the layout operating. This is over 170 feet away in real life (1 ft = 87 feet).
Has anyone ever recorded the sound of an engine from 170 feet away. Is it as loud as standing right next to the engine? NO!
Then why should the little HO engine sound that way. I thought that we, the modelers, were after realism but from the many sound units on most layouts I have heard everyone must be hard of hearing (as in deaf)!
Just my opinion from sitting along the tracks for way too many years.
BOB H - Clarion, PA
I don’t see speakers as a bottleneck. Several people on this site have come up with viable solutions. For example, you can put locators on the engines and project the sound through stereo or quad speakers to the location of the locos or waterfall, cattle, etc.
However, we have no ideas on how to improve on the Kadee. The options we have–as you mentioned, don’t cut it.
I can easily give you a non-technichal answer to that… Earphones are a controlled and designed small environment placed in or around your ear… Locos are a box around the speaker with an (almost) complete lack of accoustic wadding so that they will act as a sounding box… we sit that on an awful surface in the form af a baseboard… and all that is in a large room which is totally beyond the manufacturer’s control.
On the issue of couplers you might like to consider what we have to deal with… Some UK prototypes have h ad Buckeye couplers for some time but these work witht stock that is still using screw-link couplers. Three link and Instanter link couplings were still around when I started back in the 70s. You might like to consider coupling/uncoupling cars that are joined by 3 oval links of chain onto a fixed hook between side buffers.
This is a good reason to go for US models! [:D]
Well, that is comparing apples and pumpkins. It has always been easy to get good sound in earphones because one doesn’t have to broadcast the sound through the open environment.
Well, when the prototype figures out a better way than having a brakeman walk down and pull the uncopling lever (equivalent to our prod with a skewer) to do it, then I’ll worry about a better way to do it with models. At least we don’t have to connect the brake hoses everytime we couple up!
Off the top of my head, we’d have to add a small actuator/solenoid device in or under each car, something that would receive a decoder or specific frequency radio signal to press a steel pin against an opener lug behind the couplers. They would close with pressure, and stay closed until forced to open with the actuators. Would add some weight and lots of cost to the cars…every car…all of them…many…
OR we could do things the “easy” way and get a little sized (robotic) brakeman to hop out of the caboose (or loco, for you more modern types), walk over to the cars needing uncoupled and pull up on the uncoupling levers.
Now the trick is getting all those itty bitty linkages to work AND getting a bipedal robot that small…
This discussion makes me recall the O27 couplers on my father’s layout when I was growing up. As many of you O guagers know, the couplers(at least Lionel which is what we had) were spring loaded–they had a disc on the bottom, and when activated over an electric uncoupler(pretty weird-looking modified piece of track) the disc was sucked(magnetically speaking) down, springing the knuckle open. I always liked the way they worked–I was particularly impressed with the loud buzzing they made at each uncoupling episode. Problems with this: suspect would have operational issues/problems downsized to HO scale, and that disc on the bottom of each coupler unit isn’t exactly the epitome of prototypical appearance. But I don’t know, Chip, maybe if your wand had a big enough magnet in it . . . .
Jim
As to couples;
The Old Dog has been seeing ads on cable TV for a device called the “Clever Clasp”, a magnetic device for replacing the mechical hooks on women’s necklaces which are hard to fasten. They show the device surporting a fairly large set of keys.
In addition, the Old Dog has seen ads for “super magnets” in on line electronic stores.
One has to wonder if one could mount the magnets on the ends of the draft gear on cars and use them as couples something the Brino toy trains do. To couple, just shove together. To uncouple, simply pull apart. One might need to put the magnets on pivets to get good service on curves.
And for some modeling the pre-knuckle couple era, the result might even look better.
Have fun
DAWG: The PROBLEM with Magnets is they attract dibris. Don’t have any? The magnet will find!
MOUSE: The Magnetic ‘WAND’ exists - except it’s under the track and fixed. One moves the cars instead of the ‘wand’. It also can be activated and deactivated (unlike children).
NOTHING is perfect.
My point exactly. No one has a good idea for uncoupling, let alone a great one. It’s like we’ve all accepted our fate. Hence, a bottleneck.
Your getting philopsychological on us again, Chip…
Tom
As I see it, the problem with couplers isn’t a technical one. As fwright mentioned in one of the above posts, an excellent technical solution exists which recalls the Lionel couplers of old, namely the Sergents coupler. This is a well designed coupler of prototypical size, available in a number of prototypical styles, which works well, and as intended. It is reasonable in price too.
Where the problem lies is with the hobbyist’s desires. Rather than think like a train crew, when operating a train or designing a layout, we instead continue to do things as they’ve always been done. When you don’t get things to work differently than in the past, why be surprised???
If you design your layout, or switching layout if you don’t want to start over, with access to the cars as a central concern, then you’ll be able to work a train like a train crew, and remote uncoupling is no longer an issue, since the big boys don’t do it that way. Neither will be dialing up a turnout in order to throw it using an accessory decoder.
Of course, this is easy for me t
SpaceMouse,
There is no “bottleneck”. Real trains don’t have electro-couplers, so why should we? It’s like saying that there’s a “bottleneck” in the hobby because our boxcar doors don’t automatically open when we spot them at a siding.
Sargeant couplers are the most realistic couplers are the market. They use a magnet on a wand to “pull the pin” that allows the knuckle to open. They also don’t center themselves (just like most real ones).
Paul A. Cutler III
Weather Or No Go New Haven