Walthers makes a Coupler Pocket Conversion Kit for Athern 85’ Hi-Cube Box and Flat cars that will convert the couplers to body mounting with a swinging motion. Has anyone tried these to convert passenger cars to body mounted couplers? I am thinking of Athern, Con-Cor, Rivirossi and similer cars.
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-997
They look similar to the couplers on the Walthers passenger car I recently purchased.
I’m considering converting three Rivorossi HO streamliners to body mounted couplers.
If I’m not mistaken, Kadee produces a coupler kit that can be body mounted and allows some swiveling. I’ll check Kadees chart to make sure.
The problem you will likely run into is getting the cars around the curves. That’s why so many passenger cars come with truck-mounted couplers.
Park a pair of passenger cars on the sharpest curve you plan to run them on. Take a look at the coupler position relative to the center line. That will give you some idea of how much swing the couplers will need to get around the curve.
If the swing retrofit coupler is designed with the same specs as the Walther’s cars, you should be able to negotiate 24" radius curves w/o any problems. Some modification for added movement of the coupler may allow for tighter radius, but this could end up trial and error. Many other factors could come into play as truck and wheel to frame interferance, truck pivot distance to the coupler itself and coupling distance (spacing between cars) as not to have diaphams bind in a turn.
Straight body mount and close prototypical spacing would require at least a 30" min for radius in most cases for full length cars.
Radius of track will determine the best answer.
I replace truck mounted couplers with long shank Kadees with Con Cor and with Rivarossi passenger cars. I place the coupler box away from ends at a point where I have realistic distance between the cars. My mainline has 30" and 32" curves. Also, I add correct weights. The cars will not cause derailments with those two changes.
I ‘rigidly’ mount my couplers on my passenger cars (in a typical #5 case) and I have no issues going around 24" radaii…and this is with Diaphrams AND 80-85 foot cars.
David
Why not use the Kadee truck mounted conversion couplers? As soon as you put a swinging mount on the body, all the arguments for body mounting, except “it isn’t prototypical”, go right out the window. I have a slew of passenger cars, both 4 and 6 wheel trucks, with the Kadee conversions, and they work extremely well.