Having been aboard a crummy or two, I can attest to the accuracy of their stories. Not all engineers are the same. Some have a great hand for working their air and throttle. Others are teeth crackers and neck breakers. Hang on for your life! You should have seen the coal train I watched as it was switched in a yard, my vicinity a few weeks back. I am quite certain that many of those cars will suffer premature knuckle or drawbar failures! It sounded more like an artillery barrage than banging cars around. Meanwhile, back on the N scale, I have used M/T couplers since they were first available and happily keep my fleet all standardized to that one brand.
The early Accumates (8 or 9 years ago) did have problems. I've had them come apart simply taking the car out of the jewel case. The recent ones have been much better.
I ran the newer Accumates for year. Hard coupling action and trip pins coming out when adjusting trip pin height did not cut it for me. I'm not thrilled with the out of scale appearance of either coupler; however a bigger coupler allows for more vertical movement and fewer uncoupling issues. I finally made the decision to standardize / convert to MTL's and FVM metal wheels. At least now everything plays well together and my eye is not drawn to any appearance deviations. Jerry
What I could never understand is why people will complain about the "slinky" action of MT's and totally ignore the 10 foot coupling distance of Accumates. The "slinky" is the only problem I have heard about the MT's and it can be fixed rather easily but the only way to fix the extended coupling distance and the other Accumate issues is to get MT's. One other thing that needs mentioned here. That is consistancy. Establishing and holding to a standard, be it wheelsets or couplers or whatever, will aid greatly in having a smooth operation. Mixing things like cars with some having MT's and others Accumates does not improve the operation but presents problems much like the weak link in a chain.
I haven't seen a need to change out my Accumates, they run just fine with my Kadee/MT trucks and couplers. I run 30+ car trains over a 150' + main line without any problems.
I have seen plenty of complaints about the coupling distance of Accumates, but it is a trade off some people are willing to make to get rid of the slinky effect. Again, there is no perfect coupler, they are all a compromise. The only "easy" fix I know of is to add resistance to the last car(such as the axle spring some people mention). That's great if you use cabooses or only have a few cars that may be at the end of the train, but if any car may end up at the end, you can not very well and resistance to every car and still be be able to run trains of a decent length. Actually, since the coupler itself is no longer than a Micro Trains coupler, you can put Accumates in Micro Trains trucks or use body mounting to get closer coupling.
There is actually supposed to be a new N-scale coupler coming out that I am holding out hope for: http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?142428-New-coupler-on-the-way
Yes, as a matter of fact I did, and all those solutions are "adding resistance to the last car of the train." Concerning the FireFly Fred, when switching industries, the last car of the train can change quite often. I do not want to switch out the truck on the last car every time it changes.
Thanks for the reminder; I had completely forgotten, and sure don't want to do that. I want to try some of them out
Hi Bendtracker1, I had a similar problem with my Atlas pulpwood cars as well, which had the old Rapido style couplers. I found that they needed a bit of careful grinding with a Dremel tool using a Tungsten Carbide bit (I believe it was a #9901, 1/8" diameter with a flat end) to widen the notch in the end sill to clear the draft gear so the truck could pivot properly, and I think I also used a thin delrin washer (included with the trucks) between the bolster and the truck. It worked fine, but remember to go slow and easy with the Dremel to avoid "tool grab" and losing control during the cutting operation. Bill in FtL
Still don't know why this topic turns into a religious debate every time it appears. I run mixxed trains of Accumates, Micro-Train, and McHenry couplers in 70-80 car trains on N trak with no problems at all. In 5 years I have had one Accumate fail and that was my fault. It was a brand new car that I had just picked up the day before and hadn't had time to go through it. The trip pin was low and I didn't adjust it, thus it caught in a turnout and caused a derailment. Replaced the truck and made sure the trip pin height was right, no problems from that point on. Every car gets checked when new before hitting the layout, MT, Accumate or whatever. The are errors in mass production with any brand and it is best to find them before they cause a problem. My take on couplers.... Micro-Trains - best for layouts using magnetic/automatic coupling. They flat out work the best. Slinky sucks on long trains. Best looking smallest size (I use Z scale couplers when size counts). Accumates - Cheap, reliable, NO SLINKY. Fewer unintended uncouplings than MT. A little stiffer to automatic couple and uncouple. Check the trip pin height on every one before running. Older (7-8 years old) car equipped need a dot of glue on the coupler box cover. As Atlas tools new cars and trucks, the coupling distance is improving dramatically. The old trucks had a provision to be converted back to Rapido that added length to the coupler box. New equipment has done away with that and the box is much closer to the truck. These are not available aftermarket yet though. McHenry - I have had no issues with them as of yet. The knuckle looks a little bigger than others. Automatic uncoupling so far is as good as MT. Fits easily in any Accumate box, will also fit in MT box with a swipe or two of a file. NO SLINK. EZ Mate - Bachmann's straight up copy of the McHenry only slightly larger knuckle. The one advantage is that they offer them in three different shank lengths so you can get close coupling out of the old Accumate trucks with them if you would like.
Hi Inkaneer, Actually, I remember the old X2f couplers quite well, and even the hook & loop couplers they replaced (I guess that dates me!). The problem with the X2f really wasn't that it was designed by a committee, which it was, the problem was that no two were alike from manufacturer to manufacturer. Since it was designed by the NMRA, and then the design was given royalty free to any manufacturer to use, every manufacturer made their own little "improvements" to the design. Things like centering spring methods and tension, length and width of the "horn", length of the trip pin, type of material used and just about every other possible dimension were all changed, for whatever reason. If you stuck with one particular brand of X2f, and mounted them properly at the correct height, they actually worked pretty well, although they looked rather unlike the prototype. Had the design been patented (and that patent enforced by the NMRA) so that the manufacturers couldn't make their own changes in the design, I think Kadee would have had a much harder time becoming the defacto standard. Look at all the different changes that various manufacturers have made to their copies of the Kadee couplers once Kadee's patents expired, and you'll get some idea of what I'm talking about. That's the main reason why the Kadees are still the best choice when it comes to couplers in just about any scale! Also, mixing body mounted and truck mounted couplers can adversely affect reliable operation, which should be interesting, because now many N scale manufacturers in N scale are breaking away from the traditional truck mounted design and switching to body mounts. With all the equipment using truck mounted couplers already in existence, it should be interesting how this plays out in the future. How many people went to the trouble to switch their old couplers to the MTL reverse draft angle knuckles when they first became available? Bill in FtL
Hi Jerry, Which FVM wheelsets do you use, the wider standard model, or the narrow tread version? I have heard the narrower ones do not like some types of turnouts, although they seem to do OK on my UniTrack. I tried them on a bunch of my rolling stock because the plastic wheels are supposed to get dirty faster, by creating a static charge when rolling. Recently, when I put a train together that had all MTL plastic wheels, I was amazed at how much quieter things seemed, because after running the FVM metal wheels, I guess I had became accustomed to their louder noise. Bill in FtL
I use the fine scale (narrow tread) on my Unitrack layout without any issues. I periodically run a track cleaning car using lacquer thinner solvent and every year check and clean wheel sets of any lint and grime. When it comes to metal wheel making noise, I happen to like it and consider it very prototypical. I also realize that same noise can be annoying at times to others and respect their desire to use plastic wheels. Jerry
