Hello all,
Four months ago…a friend gave me two boxes of HO scale trains ,from the 50’s. In all my years of being in this hobby , never have I seen these couplers.
1 . Who made them ?
2. Why aren’t they produced today ?
Thank you for any help ,you can provide.
Patrick
Beaufort,SC
Dragon River Steel Corp {DRSC}
It may be a VERY early Kadee. Do you have a top shot of it?
Good evening Patric: Your have to be as old as me (63) and have been in HO for most of that time, actually since I was 11. That is a Devor coupler made by Devor. I hope that I got the spelling right. In my collection of Model Railroader magazines I’m sure that I have an ad for them. Anyway, they were good looking couplers but I had trouble getting them to operate well. One advantage was they coupled with dummy couplers. They looked good. Thanks for asking that question as it brought back many pleasent memories.
My Best
Hello Paul,
Age wise …not quite there as of yet , only 35. Thank you for the info , these couplers were about to drive me nuts as to who made them. They don’t work well with Kadees, thats for sure. I only have threee working sets of these couplers, sure wish I had more.
Patrick
Beaufort,SC
Dragon River Steel Corp {DRSC}
Hi There;
Paul:
You are right. I remember those couplers. ( same age 63)
Patrick;
To uncouple those couplers you put a thin strip of celluloid spiked between the rails with an upward s bow in it. The same way used to uncouple the old Mantua hook & loop Couplers.
Tom
Unlike the Mantuas, which had a hook and would remain coupled while passing over a ramp, the Devore couplers had to have a ‘live’ ramp, since they were supposed to uncouple any time the fake glad hand was lifted. Of course, they often didn’t - the parts were very small and even a grain of dust would jam them.
As soon as the original Kadee K coupler became available, I changed over. It didn’t look as good, but it was several hundred percent more reliable (live diamond ramp and all.)
Needless to say, I have just dated myself terribly!
Chuck
Patrick,
If that is a wagon from the 50s it is pretty impressive. [tup] What brand is it? The thing I noticed is the wheels flanges.
I was still going to school in the 50s, but anything I had at that time was coarse scale compared to what you have there.
A question for the historians, which I could look up for myself if I was not so lazy, when was RP25 first drawn up?
Off the coupler topic, but:
Patrick
I believe RP25 was 1st announced in its final form around 1961-1962. According to articles, advertisements, and history provided by others in other forums, there was considerable discussion and debate on how big flanges needed to be keep trains on the track in the late '50s and early '60s. Testing and engineering finally established that the wheel tread taper and flange fillet did most of the work until you got down to model-only curve radii. Even then, the flange fillet did most of the steering, but the wheel-set had to “slip” to overcome the difference in distance traveled between inner and outer rails - which is why the significant increase in friction on model curves.
Central Valley had come out with a wheel profile (CV3) that performed even better (and looked better) than RP25 but was proprietary. The other point of compromise was having to be backwards compatible with the existing installed track base.
The last point - compatibility with existing installed track base - is why finer standard wheels don’t work very well (but look much prettier). The track and wheels have to be designed as an integrated system to work properly. Code 88 wheels tend to suffer wheel drop in NMRA-spec frogs. And now we have a range of standards, most of which have very little commercial support. In HO, we have standard NMRA track and Code 110 wheels, Code 88 wheels and fine scale track, Code 64 wheels and P87 track, plus whatever manufacturers actually deliver.
yours in history
Fred W
Good Evening Guys: Well I guess several of us have dated ourselves on this thread. The Devors did look real good but would in no way couple with the Kadee. I remember the first Kadee couplers. They were much bulkyer than the ones of today. The Kadees have evolved into the ones we have today. I thought that I still had some of those old Kadee couplers but I guess they got lost in one of the moves that I made.
Anyway I’ve enjoyed this jaunt down memory lane. If anyone wants to chat more drop me a line.
Good Night All
As long as this is the geezer’s corner … remember when the Kadee #5 was the Kadee #5 and 10? They never did make the #10 I guess. It was going to use the same coupler pocket as the 5.
Remember the Varney dummy knuckle couplers with the actual spring action so a train could take up slack? They sort of coupled with early Kadees and sort of coupled with the Devors – if you lifted the car up and force fit the thing. Cars with those Varney dummies still look pretty good by the way – especially the metal cars with those beautiful lithographed sides. Those cars actually look like metal. Hard to explain why it should look so different from plastic when the paint is the same.
The Kadee No. 4s had that same neat spring action (assuming you did not go insane intalling them) as the Varneys which of course the popular #5s and the many #5 types don’t do.
We have made much progress but a real working cushion underframe in HO is still not here (and yes i remember John Armstrong’s article about how to build one in O scale)
Dave Nelson
The Kadee #10 was the #5 without a box, meant to be a drop-in installation on Athearn BB kits and the others that were supposed to have the NMRA universal coupler box. It proved to be less of a hassle to market a single product than two, separate, versions of the same thing.
I still have Kadee K couplers in service! Long since stripped of their operating pins, they are used for internal coupling of multi-car cuts that are never broken up (unit coal trains and core consists of through freights.)
Since John Armstrong’s working cushion-frame was of the full floating underframe type, the really interesting action was at the end away from the switcher. The frame would shoot out a (scale) foot or so, then the car would center itself on the floating element!
Chuck
When it first came out, the Athearn compatible Kadee was the K10. The K5 and K4 were the same coupler, but one had a draft gear box. When the MK series came out, they altered things and had the MK5&10, eventually the MKD5.
The K4 and the Devore coupling had the same funny shank. I think I have a Devore on a Varney hopper. (And I’m not even 60 yet.)