I am aware that many manufacturers are liberal with the height of their standard couplings, but is there an official standard. With standard couplings I mean the like of Roco, Bemo. My new Minitrains Stains is for example between 1 and 2 mm higher than a Roco steam and diesel loco. Are there NEM norms for these couplings?
I stand to be corrected but I don't think there are any current standards for coupling height.
Bob
Not 009 society ones, no. I'd imagine that each rtr manufacturer (bemo, Roco, etc.) has a standard so that their stock will couple up, but it is quite likely that each has their own height standard!
My stock has been set to one of the little Roco 4 wheel flat mines trucks and seems to get on fairly well on other people's layouts. The other 'standard' is the height gauge that the Greenwich coupling guys produce.
The same a Julien, I also use the Roco four wheel wagons to set all my couplings. The reason for this is that I use these as bogies and it is virtually imposable to change their coupling heights.
This also happens to be the same as that used by Egger-bahn who were the first to use this coupling in our gauge/scale combination in 1963.
Unfortunately you will indeed find a wide variety of coupling heights even on R-T-R H0e items. Some manufactures do not even keep them the same for every product, Roco and Liliput for example!
The 1980
There is the "Greenwich" coupling height gauge, but I'm not sure how they came to choose the heights on it. From memory ??? 5.5 mm 6 mm, 7.5 mm and 8 mm and I think they are for the mounting height and buffer height for 009 and perhaps 0-16.6 (or possibly something entirely different!)
Thanks for the answers. Indeed, the new Minitrains Stainz loco has a coupler even 1 mm higher than the Minitrains Plymouth. If I compare it to other stock, I would think it is indeed to high. Its top is about 6.8 mm from the top of the track. That said, it does couple fine with the wagons with a lower coupling.
Hope you can see it well in the picture.
(https://forum.009society.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsvencentral.com%2Fweblinks%2F009%2F2013%2Fcouplingheight.jpg&hash=191084c6f5e90941de559222238f946d6e56499b) (http://svencentral.com/weblinks/009/2013/couplingheight.jpg)
Obviously the design of the coupling head will make a difference to the height of the pin but in the