Accurail Coupler pocket depth

[Fluesheet]

I ran into a Kadee coupler binding problem on an Accurail Lehigh Valley single sheathed boxcar a couple of days ago. The culprit appears to be insufficient depth of the coupler pocket - the Kadee spring was taller than the pocket was deep. It can be made to work if the lid screw is loosened enough, but a significant gap then remains.

Other Accurail cars I have either have a different coupler pocket design or I'd used a coupler with a "whisker" type spring, so I'd not noted this before.

The quick fix was to trim the ears and back of the spring to < .060" (from .075" - the pocket depth is = .060").

Just passing along an observation. Accurail makes what I think are excellent models, so this glitch surprised me. The sliver lining is that the couplers do NOT droop!

Attached are photos of the pocket in question (in which the remaining gap is still somewhat visible), and a comparison of a trimmed spring to an unaltered one.


Matt

 

[brakie]

Matt,One way to over come this problem is to use the new 148 or the scale 153 coupler..However,I have slightly filed the inside of the coupler box in order to get the centering spring to fit.

 

[jbaakko]

You know the worst part? The Kadee spring plate is already designed for a coupler box thats too thin to be prototypical!

 

[Fluesheet]

Matt,One way to over come this problem is to use the new 148 or the scale 153 coupler..However,I have slightly filed the inside of the coupler box in order to get the centering spring to fit.

The whisker couplers are a good idea - for a short time a few years ago I'd considered switching to McHenry's because they had a similar feature (and were a little closer to scale size). I gave up on that brand after coming across the problem of the couplers taking a set.

I have a good amount of standard #5's in my inventory, so switching to whiskers or "scale" couplers will have to wait

You know the worst part? The Kadee spring plate is already designed for a coupler box thats too thin to be prototypical!

That's a surprise to me!

 

[brakie]

You know the worst part? The Kadee spring plate is already designed for a coupler box thats too thin to be prototypical!

Actually the coupler pockets was designed to accept the X2F coupler and never designed for the KD coupler and still being design that way because of the design of the KD coupler.Also the majority of the coupler boxes is out of scale!!

 

[jbaakko]

Too wide, not tall enough.

Want Proto, check out the Accurail P:87 couplers, or Sergent.

 

[CNWman]

Huh, that's weird, I've never had that happen with my Accurail cars before, although one of them has a permenent whisker coupler after the peg on the boxplate broke off and required glueing.