I find the knuckle couplers that come with the rolling stock to be difficult to work with and I believe the tightness of them causes some issues in turns. Because of my problems, I have been working on designing more geriatric-friendly couplers. I should note early on that it is not my goal to accurately reproduce realworld items in T scale, so I am fine with things that may not be reallife typical but are functional. Form follows function, I was taught. My coupler design attached. Anyway, one of the first things that arises is where the couplers mount. In discussions on the HO and larger scale boards, the couplers mounted to the bogies is not recommended. So I wonder if anyone here has tried mounting the couplers to the carriage instead of to the bogies? But I could be missing something obvious here. Maybe Tscale people aren't coupling and uncoupling rolling stock that often and possibly it's just better to leave a group of cars afixed together and not worry about building a train of cars each time you want to run. EDIT: note that the attached design shows both ends of the coupler. Only half of each side is needed.
In Z scale you can get couplers that either mount to the car (carriage?), or mount to the truck (bogies?). Scott
Body-mount couplers are always better than truck-mounted, realistically and operationally. If you're not doing complex operations simulating the real guys (switching to build a train, then coupling the road engines to that train, etc.), then you're fine with a kind of drawbar that semi-permanently couples the engines and cars together. I'm thinking along the lines of something that can be easily separated once off the track but stays put on the track. I like your design.
I was wondering about something else sort of related. Instead of putting weights in rolling stock, how would using a very small magnet inside the body of the stock work? If no one has tried it, I'll put it on my list of things to make and o.
