Going with N Guage,,coupler question.


R

Railjack

New Member
After digging through my Model RR stuff over the past couple of weeks,ive found that most all of my HO stuff is in pretty rough shape and I dont have as much of it as I thought .However my N Guage stuff is actually in pretty fair shape,though I only have one old Bachman engine left and a few cars but have alot of track and switches to get started with.Im planning to build the layout in modules anyway and N gauge seems to work alot better for that.Ill need to get a magnifying headset though,hehe.


My few cars and the engine have the old Rapido couplers and looking around there seems to be several new knuckle options available.I was wondering if there is some level of universal use amongst these new Knuckle couplers as in are any of them interchangable?..and if not whats a good brand to go with and convert to?
 
They are interchangeable. To various degrees of reliability. I preferred micro trains when I was in nscale. If you plan on short trains then they all work well together. Longer trains and grades with various couplers produced frequent uncoupling on my layout. I had 50 car trains.

Captain of Industry
President of Lancaster Central RR
President of Lancaster & Western Maryland Railway
 
I personally like Micro-Trains best, and they've been by far the most reliable. Kato couplers work pretty well, but you do have to use some manual encouragement to get them to couple to anything other than Kato couplers, and they're not really suited as coupler conversions due to their design. Atlas couplers couple well, but don't have near the strength that Micro-Trains do. I tend to leave them on my rolling stock until they give me problems, but I've learned by now that they will almost always fail when they're on a locomotive at the front of any long train or even between two locomotives in a consist and I just replace those as soon as I get a new locomotive. The downside to Atlas or Kato is that they pretty much just make one coupler and that's it. Micro-Trains has many different designs that will convert almost any piece of rolling stock or locomotive, though at times you do need to modify the equipment you're mounting them on in some small way. I tend to prefer replacing the entire truck on rolling stock rather than doing coupler conversions, as the Micro-Trains trucks are usually superior to the older trucks anyway and it's much easier than trying to convert the couplers.
 
micro-trains, IMO is by far the BEST.

Bachmann have been so so at best. I also go with MT trucks, instead of converting. For passenger cars, I don't switch, I use accumate/red caboose (now fox valley) dummy knuckles with great results.

I even converted almost all my locos to DCC, even my FIRST N scale loco I bought in 1986. Some of the new Bachmann locos have SOUND, I have a big steam and a DD40x with GREAT sound.

I had HO, but my N scale roster has held up far better over time.
 
Railjack said:
After digging through my Model RR stuff over the past couple of weeks,ive found that most all of my HO stuff is in pretty rough shape and I dont have as much of it as I thought .However my N Guage stuff is actually in pretty fair shape,though I only have one old Bachman engine left and a few cars but have alot of track and switches to get started with.Im planning to build the layout in modules anyway and N gauge seems to work alot better for that.Ill need to get a magnifying headset though,hehe.


My few cars and the engine have the old Rapido couplers and looking around there seems to be several new knuckle options available.I was wondering if there is some level of universal use amongst these new Knuckle couplers as in are any of them interchangable?..and if not whats a good brand to go with and convert to?
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Keep in mind that the longer the rolling stock you're running and the tighter the turns, the longer the couplers are going to need to be in order to connect. Yesterday I put a couple of my longer cars from my Christmas set up on a 9 3/4" radius curve from my first module and the couplers aren't physically long enough to even touch, let alone connect.

Depending upon your plans, that may or may not be an important consideration, but it is something to keep in mind as the knuckles have to actually connect with a bit to spare just to remain on the track.
 
I guess I'm on board with other folk when it comes to micro trains. Years ago I had a large N scale layout with over 11 scale miles of main line and could regularly pull train 50 cars long, or even longer with micro trains couplers. I did use magnets for uncoupling and also had very few if any problems.
 
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