Just joined the forum. Have been out of HO MRRing for decades but never lost my love for it. Then…grandchildren! I have been building a new layout form us and am having a ball. So many new things on the market. Anyway, all my rolling stock have the old J type ? connectors and I have been converting over to good quality knuckle couplers. Have a height gauge and they are working great thanks to the hours of online video tutorials now available.
I find I prefer separate trucks attached (screw on) and couplers as opposed to the all-in-one type that snap on. Are there brands that sell rolling stock configured this way? I would rather not buy a new piece and then have to redo it other than adding spacers for height. I do most purchasing on-line and can’t tell from the descriptions.
Most kits and RTR rolling stock these days come with a screw to hold the truck to the bolster. Some of the older Accurail kits only had the bolster “pins” to secure the truck in place. However, the newer Accurail kits come with both pins and screws.
Some Bowser locomotives come with a clip to hold the coupler/coupler boxes on but I’ve found them to be pretty secure. Older Accurail rolling stock came with coupler box covers that are press fit into a hole. I usually replace these with Kadee coupler boxes that have a screw holding the cover/coupler box in place.
In the event that you do run across a non-screw application, it’s always good to have some spare 2-56 screws in your parts drawer - just in case. Usually 1/4" or 5/16" will cover the bases. Some truck screws (e.g. Bowser) are considerably longer than other truck screws. However, those kind usually are include with the kit.
I think the original poster was talking about the now rarely seen all in one truck with coupler mounted to it!
Are they still doing that?! Maybe this is on his older stuff. I remember some cheapo rolling stock had coupler and truck as one to make those 15" radius curves sent in older sets.
I am in HOn3 and, of course, all rolling stock have separate coupler and truck situations.
Welcome to the forums![#welcome], and welcome back to the hobby!
Truck mounted couplers are a thing of the past on most freight cars. I’m not sure about passenger cars or longer freight.
If you have been watching lots of videos you will know that converting your old rolling stock from truck mounted to body mounted couplers usually isn’t too difficult. It may require the installation of a styrene platform to mount the coupler box but that is easy too.
Any new rolling stock will have knuckle couplers but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be changed anyhow. Some knuckle couplers are made from plastic and are prone to uncoupling under load. If you have plastic couplers the common advice is to replace them with metal ones, the most popular of which are the KaDee’s.
Thanks for the information. I recently purchased a freight car online and it had an all-in-one coupler/truck. Must have been old stock. I do use KaDee metal couplers, have a 2-56 tap and lots of screws and have been successful converting my old stock.
Just found out there is a train show on the 19th in Columbus Ohio which I’m going to with son and 2 of my grandsons. I will be able to check out this topic further!
I have lots of the old Tyco/Mantua, Life-Like, Bachmann, varney, etc rolling stock that I’ve converted with body mounted Kadee couplers. It’s really quite easy once you’ve done a few. Tyco and Bachmann had some cars that rode very high on their trucks thus requiring the mounting location to be built up quite significantly, in the case of a gondola I converted a pad of over 1/8th of an inch had to be put in to mount the coupler at the proper level.
There might be few manufacturers of “toy train set quality” equipment that still use "talgo: trucks with truck mounted couplers, but any quality car from Athearn, Atlas, Intermountain, Exactrail etc. etc. will have separate trucks and couplers. Kadee’s patent expired a few years ago, so most of these cars come with a copy version of the Kadee coupler…although in my experience, none are as good as ‘real’ Kadees.
There are still trainset quality cars that have the couplers integral to the truck – at one time we called them talgo trucks which actually was rather a misleading use of the name of the low slung and curve hugging Talgo trains from Spain. But the notion was that the integral “talgo” truck would go around very sharp curves a bit better than frame mounted couplers and that might well be true – WHEN you are going forward. Try going backwards with “talgo” trucks and all bets are off. In fact the cars as well as the bets will be off, in no time.
A more “recent” development, if the early 1970s can be called recent, is the talgo type trucks on trainset type cars with springy nubs that slip into a hole in the bolster and then snap in place, versus the screw type attachment of the old Mantua/Tyco kits or the press fit pin as used by AHM type cars, and more recently, Accurail. The problem with the snap fit is that the small plastic nubs tend to break off if you try to remove and replace the trucks more than a few times. Plus you need access to the top of the opening to squeeze the nubs together.
I found it practical to insert and glue a piece of hollow plastic tubing from Plastruct into the opening that had a new interior hole small enough to hold a screw such as the ones Athearn used to fasten its trucks. Even if the screws were not self tapping the fit was tight enough that the screw would tend to create its own threads. That way I could use the original floor and bolster. Again this works so long as you do not unscrew and screw the trucks too many times.
Other guys filled the hole with a plug of solid styrene and then drill a new hole. And of course still other guys just do not try to salvage that quality of car. But some of us are stubborn people …
As to mounting the couplers, as Jeffrey-Wimberly wrotes above, this is quite easy once