Out with rapido..best MT way to go????

[dwight77]

There are about a 40% or my freight cars, most of which are the 40' size, and some beer can and standard size tank cars, that have rapido couplers and I am contemplating changing them out with MT couplers and trucks.
MT has a variety of truck/coupler styles. Is there one (like bettendorf, archbar, etc) that would lend itself to meeting most of the changeouts? I enjoy N Scale but it is times like this when my old eyes don't let me appreciate the difference in the truck styles and I am more interested in having a nice looking string of cars.
I am pretty sure that I dont want to go to the body mounted coupler as I am not sure I would have the patience to try and set the coupler height for each car. I know it is a bit more expensive, but it seems to me that getting the coupler and truck together pretty much eliminates the height question. Besides which, I am only spending the kids money anyway. :mrgreen:
Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated.
dwight77
N. Ft. Myers Florida

 

[SeriousSam]

you could try exchanging the couplers, but ive never had good luck keeping them from "hanging." one of the things you could do is replace the trucks with the Atlas trucks that are sold in pairs. Now, they dont have MTs. They use Accumates. But ive never had any problems with unwanted uncouplings. Better yet, I have never had any trouble when mixing couplers where an Accumate is connected with an MT. This would eliminate the height issue.

 

[umtrr-author]

Accumate trucks are slighly lower cost alternatives, but my experience has been that you get what you pay for.

MTL sells bulk packs of trucks and couplers; 20 pair to do ten cars. The street price works out to the range of around $3.50 per car.

The most likely replacement would be the Barber Roller Bearing type for beer can tank cars.