So I bought a big lot of parts on eBay. With it I got a big variety of MTL trucks and also body mount couplers. I have heard you should go all one way or the other and mixing cars with body mounted couplers with cars that have truck mounted may give me problems. How true is this and is anyone mixing without issues? I have a lot of cars that still have Rapidos that I want to convert and would like to put the body mounts to use if I can. If not I could always sell them and buy trucks.
Another question I have is what is the minimum radius body mounted couplers will operate without derailment or decoupling? I have a couple spots that have 12" radius on my track plan although its mostly 17.5". Any input or experience would be great. Thanks!
I would think body mount is always preferable because there should be less chance of lateral forces on the couplers and trucks causing a derailment when pushing a cut of cars.
Never heard of the all one way or all the other thing ever, but I’ve been out of N for many years.
Back in my N scale days I body mounted all of my couplers.
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Micro-Trains offered a pre assembled coupler, and their floor castings were pre-drilled for a 00-90 screw, so the conversion was very easy. Everything ran better.
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Note: This was more than 20 years ago. Maybe track has improved to the point that this mofification is not longer any benefit.
Unfortunately these couplers aren’t pre-assembled, all the parts come on sprues so I have to do it which isn’t a big deal but with this lot, among a ton of other things I also got the Micro-Trains assembly jig and height adjustment tool so putting them in shouldn’t be an issue. I just want to make sure I won’t run into problems if only some of my cars have body mounted couplers.
When I was in N Scale as late as 2012 I started to body mount all my couplers and half way throught the project I decided it was worth the hassell since the truck mouts wasn’t causing any issues on my 1’x 8’ ISL.
I think Larry meant to say “decided it wasn’t worth the hassle”.
It may be that the physics of N-scale may not make it a major issue whether or not you have truck mounted or body mounted couplers.
Probably the best thing would be to operate your rolling stock and see for yourself if pushing long cuts of cars into yard tracks through turnouts results in the trucks being pushed out of alignment and derailing cars.
If operations are ok and no issues when pushing, then no actions need to be taken. Sometimes trail and error is the most instructive.
In N scale, it all depends on if you prefer switching or just watching the trains run.
If switching is your thing, body mounting is the way to go. If you prefer just watching the train run, you could use either. But, i would do the easiest thing and use truck mounted couplers.
Not with truck mounted MT couplers they work quit well on ISL switching.I have several years experince with N Scale switching including with those old Rapido couplers.
N Scale MT truck mounts isn’t like HO X2F truck mounts…
There is some logic to body mount, because the forces when pushing are straight throught the body rather than through the one truck, then the body, and then the other truck. So in theory, you could derail if there is a lot of force such as a very long cut of freight cars. And at the N-scale level, the physics may not cause problems until and unless you have a very long cut of cars. On an ISL layout, maybe the number of cars being pushed isn’t long enough to manifuest problems.
Ok I will be more than likely running trains and doing switching also. I will wait until I have some of my track laid hopefully in a few weeks and run a shoving test with truck mounted. The whole idea behind this was to make use of the body mounts I have because I’m not sure I have enough truck mounted to change over all of my Rapidos. Does anyone forsee any problems running cars with body mounts and truck mounts together?
Thanks Larry. Assuming where I may run into issues is mixing them with my Atlas/Accumate cars, which will be the last to be changed over as they are at the very least compatible with MT couplers. Need to focus on all the Rapidos first until finances allow me to swap out the Accumates. Assuming also that I SHOULD be ok running the body mounts on a 12" radius?
MTL is Cadillac, there is no better for N-Scale. It’s nice to hear Larry did the homework. I have wondered these things myself.
I could only see a body mount coupler being a problem when it’s on a extra-long car running a tighter radius. Being the ends of the car would be sticking out beyond the curve, a truck mounted coupler connecting to that body mount coupler probably wouldn’t work so good.
I’ve spent quite a bit of money changing all my rolling stock over to MTL truck mounted short shank couplers. Just when it’s time for me to start thinking about a break, now it’s time to start thinking about MTL metal wheels. Cha ging cha ging.
I thought I would throw this out to you. By the time I came across this it was too late for me. I had already spent enough on my trucks and was not going back another way.
One of the members in my Railroad Club went with MTL trucks with no couplers and is putting them on his cars. Then he’s purchasing Z scale body mount couplers and installing on the same cars. I haven’t seen them yet but I heard from a few other members that they look like the cat’s meow. Very prototypical looking.
Yeah my autoracks, 89’ flat cars and box cars will stay with truck mounted. My Radiuses aren’t big enough. I had heard this about the z scale couplers that they were more prototypical looking and functioned well also. Assuming though that if went with z I would have to change ALL over? Or are Z and N couplers compatible? I know z will work on an N car but can you mix the 2?
They will mate just like the Accumate and KD does in HO.There is no difference.
I started N Scale in '68 (with a Atlas train set that had a RSC-2) when it was thought to be a novelty scale that would soon fade. I came up through the school of N Scale lessons learn both easy and hard~mostly hard.[:O]
Who among us old time N Scalers can forget the wonderful Atlas/Kato RS-3 of 1983? I opt for five through a mail order shop found in MR.