Yes its normal from the factory. There is a hight gauge available for Kadees. It's bacically a block of metal that fits on the track with a kadee coupler installed in it. You adjust all your coupler hight and that trip pin according to that gauge. Use needle nose pliers carefully to adjust that tail/trip pin. Taken from the net:
Yup, I picked up the insulated version of that gauge, and am working through my cars one by one. My fleet has tripled to 20 cars recently so it's been a flurry of tweaking and upgrading cars. Next up is adding weight as needed. In the meantime, half my fleet is is parked due to coupler snagging issues. I ordered a pair of jewelry wire bending pliers (Amazon) to adjust the trip pins, as 1/3 the price of Kadee pliers.
Some of the trip levers are actually below the top of the rails even on properly installed/gauged coupler boxes. Even to the naked eye, it's obvious the radius and even lengths of the levers vary coupler to coupler on new couplers right out of the box (sleeve). Not a good situation as turnouts function like speed brakes on the levers. They just need some tweaking. It doesn't help that my tracks have vertical dips and humps where my father over-nailed the ties down. He even nailed the cork rail-beds down. Must be 100 lbs of 3/4" finishing nails in my 4 x 8 layout.
Yep. Trip pin length & radius variations are quite normal, even when new. They all need to be checked, whether a brand new car already comes equipped with them, or you install them yourself. That's just the way it is.
