G scale coupling problems

EMD trainman Jul 16, 2009

  1. EMD trainman

    EMD trainman TrainBoard Member

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    Nothing is standard in G scale and today we will discuss G scale couplers and if you plan on getting into this hobby you should follow along closely.

    There is only one type coupler that is standard in G scale and that is the "hook and loop" type coupler.

    I myself not being a big fan of the hook and loop couplers I run "knuckle type couplers instead and here is where the problem comes in. Lets take another scale for example, in the O scale world, you can buy a K-line, Lionel, MTH, Atlas 3-rail trains and hook them all up together with no problem, the same in HO, Atlas, Athearn, Bachman, Kato, etc, the all hook up together. This is not so in the G scale world as far as knuckle couplers go. Aristocraft makes their own type knuck couplers, Bachman makes thier own type, USA Trains makes their own type, MTH does, Hartland does and guess what? None of them are a standard style and these different manufacturers will not couple with each other. Another words If you buy a USA train car and a Aristocraft train car, because of the different design knuckle couplers, they won't couple to each other.

    What do you do? One alternative was to run all hook and loop couplers, but was not for me and was ruled out. Another alternative which maybe familiar to some HO modelers was to run Kadee couplers. There were some huge disadvantages for me to run these kadee couplers. First of all let me explain that all G scale commercial rolling stock mounts their couplers on the trucks of the car. Since how many railroad purist said this wasn't realistic, Kadee came out with body mounted couplers, the one huge disadvantage to a body mounted coupler was that now you need a bigger diameter curve to negotiate a curve so you don't throw the car off the track. Another disadvantage is that because there are so many different scale ratio G scale models out there you have to shim the kadee body mounted coupler to the right height with plastic styrene not included in the coupler kit. You also have to buy the kadee coupler height gauge to measure the right height for each railroad car to your track you are using. Now I own 85 freight cars, can you image how much time I would have to spend doing all of this, that wasn't for me either.

    So I came up with my own idea by experimenting. Since how the majority always wins the vote, I experimented with the couplers in which I had the most equipment of and in this case is USA Trains. Since how I had all 1:29 scale trains, the truck height was pretty much the same between manufacturers. So I tried a pair of USA knuckle couplers on my Aristocraft trains with no modifications and it worked out well, so I moved on to my LGB cars in which hardly took any modifications. Now I have seen some people have a string of Aristocraft cars and just installed USA couplers on either end of the string instead of each individual car, the only down fall to that idea was you couldn't seperate the string and run it with other cars. With me changing all non USA train cars over to USA couplers, now I can run any car with any train.. The USA trains coupler at first glance is smaller in comparison to the Aristocraft, but don't let the size full you. I have run any where from 10 to 30 car strings and had only 4 USA knuckle coupler failures since 1999, I think that is a good record, especially when you are pulling 10lbs or more of rolling weight
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