Touching on something that Craig mentioned in another thread. Has anyone else had a problem with the Atlas Accumate Couplers uncoupling frequently? I am considering replacing them all with MT's but I prefer the metal wheels of the Atlas units. Also, has anyone changed the MT truck wheels over to Atlas metal ones? If so, how well do they run? Bill
I'd be interested to know everybodies opinion on this. I have not used these couplers. I have an Atlas SD35 which i'm paying off, they come with accumates. I have always used MT couplers and have found them to be excellent. Craig did say he had been having problems with them so maybe he could tell us what he has found?
My experience with the Accumates has been a mixed bag. The engines equipped with them have not given any problems. On The 23.5 K tankcars I got all the trip pins were to low. When I tried to bend them they fell out. The coupler will operate without the trip pin if you manually uncouple. The pin does not hold the coupler together as the MT design. So if you use a Rix Pic or so other uncoupling tool rather than the magnetic ramps you can remove the trip pin altogether. The trip pin has been known to fall out on its own. MT has a better selection of truck frames but this is supposed to be alleviated. On the plus side the trucks roll well and are in the MT category in that regard. The Accumates are also cheaper that the Mt's. So in a nutshell you will hear pros and cons on the Accumates go with whatever is best suited for your situation.
Thanks for the comments, you mentioned the rix pin,I use a wooden skewer that GATS gave me to uncouple, I do have magnetic uncouplers but I much prefer doing it manually. What do the rest of you guys use? [ 20 April 2001: Message edited by: Colonel ]
For some reason some of the tankcars do have a problem staying coupled, the engines don't care who's coupler they latch onto. The trouble for me and members at my club has been the fact that the accumates will not uncouple over the magnates. Now the Atlas metal wheels in an MT frame requires removal of the needle points to have free rolling trucks ( Atlas has listed wheelsets specifically for MT truck frames but I hven't seen them yet.), now Atlas metal wheels in an Atlas truck frame is a hard to beat combination that is why for me personally I body-mount MT'1023's and leave the Atlas trucks on the car.
My local distributor had the Atlas wheels for MT trucks listed, so I have a few on order. I'll let you know how they work. (I anticipate delivery in the next couple of days) Bill
Someone mentioned uncoupling, while I was testing my last section of newly layed track I noticed uncoupling when a heavy train was travelling over the new section. It turns out a slight hump in the track due to unvene subroadbed. So although we can be quick to blame the couplers it is sometimes poor workmanship especially mine lol. One thing though is it would be great if all manufacturers made knuckle couplers the standard rather than rapido.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Colonel: Thanks for the comments, you mentioned the rix pin,I use a wooden skewer that GATS gave me to uncouple, I do have magnetic uncouplers but I much prefer doing it manually. What do the rest of you guys use? [ 20 April 2001: Message edited by: Colonel ]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I for one use a modified McD's coffee sturrer for my manual un-coupling.
Accu Mates.....yuk! First off, the design of these couplers and trucks isnt all that great. Atlas is using the same truck for there rapido equiped trucks as they are using for the trucks with AM's, just with a different coupler. The wheels. I like the brown color to them, but they stink! Altas needs to find a harder plastic to cast them in. MT uses a VERY strong plastic, which in turn makes the axles stronger. I have many cars that bounce up and down as they go down the track due to bad wheels. The coupler itself looks kinda ugly in my opinion. It is a little bigger than the MU coupler and the MT's have more detail to them. Also, the MT's are so preicise, you could softly push a car into another car and they will couple no matter what, with the MT's, sometimes they won't couple at all! When this happens I have to put the car in a different spot in the train. The trip pin also poses a big problem. I have had countless pins fall out because they hang so low. Also, the coupler box its self pops up VERY easily. I have had at least 15 cases so far where the little box has popped up. No biggy at first, but if it pops all the way out you are bound to loose a truck. I had the lovely tast of going through all of my AM's (over 35 pairs in all) and super gluing all of the coupler box's shut! That is just pathedic! As I mentioned in a perviouse thread I have a 60 car coal train and half of the cars have MT's and the other half have AM's. It takes me anywhere from 2-5 minutes just to get the train to where the couplers don't uncouple! (this means removing cars and putting them at a different spot on the train). I did not pay $550 dollars for those cars to have them come uncoupled! Gee wiz Atlas, great stuff!
60 cars that must be some train. The most I have pulled on my layout is 40 Precision Masters grain cars, all of them have either 1030 0r 1035 MT trucks on them and they run fine. As for the Atlas car wobbling around been there done that lol [ 20 April 2001: Message edited by: Colonel ]
Hi Paul, Yeah, the train looks great (even better now that I have coal loads in all the cars). They are all EDGX silver with a blue rotary end Deluxe Innovations gondolas. I would have bought all MT's for this train but couldn't resist the fact that I get two more cars converted with the Accu M's as I do for the same price as two less MT's. I am going on a quest to find more of these gondolas as we speak (want to get the train to around 85-90 cars). I also finished my UP -9 with the wings and lightning bolt and added more detail to the back then I did to the front (or so it seems) as this unit will push the train nose first as my DPU unit. I get to run this train in two weeks!!! YES!! Cant wait!!
Here is the experience I have had with Accumates. The trip pin hangs too low and falls out. The wheels in Atlas trucks are made out of a cheap plastic and if you remove the wheels from the trucks you will bend the axle and the wheel will never roll smoothly again. You can't help this because the plastic is so cheap and flexible.
I replace all trucks/couplers on any rolling stock I buy with Microtrains. They are quite simply the best. This adds to the cost somewhat, but it is good to have all trucks and couplers of the same type, so unwanted uncouplings are then usually due to poor track. (At least, in my case)
When the Accumates came out I made a decision to stick with the MT trucks and couplers. For no other reason than I knew what they were like and the Accumates were an unknown. I am somewhat leery of new products and the degree of debugging before they come to the market. I do have some cars that came with accumates on them. The 23,500 gal tank cars have the most problems with the trippin too low. Fortunately the coupler will operate with out the trip pin (except for magnetic uncoupling). So I clip the trip pin. eventually I will replace the coupler with MT but not a priority. I am now in the process of converting my MT"s to the low profile wheels. Mt should go to this as their standard wheelset.
I recently bought my third spinecar set from Alan. This time ready to roll. You guys can praise MTs all you want but when I opened the box and undid Alan's (Irene's)careful packing job guess what I found.Both of those wonderful MT couplers in pieces.Gee aren't MTs wonderful?Now I get to go spend more money to replace those wonderful MT truck and couplers. By the way guys I end up replaceing about 30 couplers a year because the damn MTs fall apart. <marquee>North American Rail Alliance</marquee>
I have just finished converting 6 of my 23,500 Gallon Atlas Tank Cars from Accumates to MT's and I also replaced the MT plastic wheels with the Atlas 33" metal ones. So far I am really pleased with both the appearance and the performance. They roll great and no more uncoupling problems. I guess this can get a little expensive, but it may just be worth it in the end. I will try to post a couple of scans of the mounted trucks (I never tried this before, so I hope this works <img src=http://members.home.net/chesapeakenscaler/ebaypics/MT_Atlas_1.jpg> <img src=http://members.home.net/chesapeakenscaler/ebaypics/MT_Atlas_2.jpg> Bill
BTW, Chesapeakenscaler, to be correct, you should have replaced the wheel with 36 inch wheels. 23,500 gallon tank cars have a 100 ton capacity, and AAR rules require 36 inch wheel on such cars, so 33 inchers ain't prototypical. Actually, except for boxcars, aslmost all freight cars today have 36 inch (100 ton) or 38 inch (125 ton) wheels. I bought two pair of Accumate plain bearing trucks to try them out, have had no problem, so just ordered 4 more, 2 for MDC Roundhouse meat reefers and 2 for cars I plan to scratchbuild.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Gregg Mahlkov: BTW, Chesapeakenscaler, to be correct, you should have replaced the wheel with 36 inch wheels. 23,500 gallon tank cars have a 100 ton capacity, and AAR rules require 36 inch wheel on such cars, so 33 inchers ain't prototypical<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> The only wheels that I could find from Atlas, that are designed to fit the MT trucks, were the 33" ones. Looks good enough to me Bill
In response to Catt's mention of broken couplers, MT's can be a bit fragile, and I have even had some packs of trucks arrive through the post with the odd one broken. But as they are very small, by their very nature they are going to be fragile (especially when attached to a metal spinecar, it seems) But on the layout, they do perform ok for me, and I will continue to fit MT trucks/couplers to ALL my stock. The best way to ensure compatibility. I also agree with Chester that MT should fit low profile wheels as standard.
