I've recently come back to OO9 after 20 years in the wilderness of On30 and , dare I say it, even HO standard gauge.
One thing I personally have never been a fan of is the the Eggerbahn/Bemo style couplers. On my old OO9 exhibition line I used the Rapido N gauge type, but as nobody made a decent coupling on it own, I ended up going round the swap-meets picking up all the cheap Lima wagons I could and cutting the couplers out of these - which is not really an ideal solution.
I've used the N gauge Kadee (now Micro-Trains) couplers on my HOn30 stock which work very well but they are expensive and fiddly to put together
So are there any other alternatives out there that are worth trying ? I'm having a go at designing my own chopper type but I don't know how much success I'll have with these.
Tom
Hi Tebee, I,m in a similar position, new back to modelling, new to 009 and starting to think about what system to employ so good look with your experiments, i,ll be watching, Mike
Hi Tom,
I'm sure you are not alone in your thoughts on couplers. I've doodled designs but they all have flaws and the more I learn the less I realize I know. If you are serious then I recommend you take a look at what has been said about reverse curves for a start. If you are a member of the Narrow Gauge Online forum http://ngrm-online.com/ (http://ngrm-online.com/) there are some photos that make it very clear.
Much as I wish otherwise, I see me continuing to use the standard Bemo type of coupler. For one thing it works with the smallest Vee skips and the largest coaches.
However, you may find your experiments with chopper couplings match well with your style of layout and rolling stock. I'd be interested to see how you get on.
Tom
I agree re Micro trains couplers but frankly I think they remain the best alternative to the most common continental type
They are available assembled in small multi packs 1015 I think and I think they are worth the extra cost. I often remove the trip pin where stock is primarily used in rakes
Bearing in mind the proliferation of kadee types in HO since the patent ran out and their lack of interchangeability the consistent use of Microtrains is well worth the effort and cost. There is some talk in US N scale circles of an alternative to them and the horrible rapido type but nothing has appeared yet. Maybe it is not so easy in N scale to come up with a commercially viable and reliable alternative and there is a message there somewhere
Peter Smith
I saw something recently by flieschmann called the "profi", it looked good but I havent used it so can't comment further
at present.
Well I got my first samples of my own idea for couplers back, and while they still need some work on them I was pleased that they actually worked.
They are made with 3-d printing in a nylon type plastic, the "hook" bit of the chopper is on a thin torsion arm that flexes to allow it to rise. The upwards pointing part of this is to catch on the loop of a normal OO9 coupler
pics
more for some reason it only letting me attach one at once
end view
and some loose couplers