A Device to Eliminate Crash-Coupling With Claw Couplers

I like it, very good idea.

Ah. Clever this Human!

Wait, that's almost too easy! Nice idea. 

Tom 

Sold!

I was thinking of something like that for my hump yard to catch the cars at the end of the bowl tracks, so they don't foul the switches. I even have a half dozen Tortoises on hand for the project. You made it look easy. 

Lew!......this is really awesome!.....thanks for posting this!....permission to use your idea!.....my layout is under construction, and this will be perfect for the yards!.....many thanks!.......Pat

That's brilliant!  I just need to figure out where the optimal place for that would be on my layout.

Lew that's a great idea.  Could you have placed it closer to the magnet so the car doesn't roll as much or did you purposely leave room for six wheel trucks?

I'm glad to see people are going to use the idea! Like all such projects I thunk and I thunk and then it came together quite quickly. 

coach joe posted:

Lew that's a great idea.  Could you have placed it closer to the magnet so the car doesn't roll as much or did you purposely leave room for six wheel trucks?

Yup, they are placed to allow for slight variations in exactly where the uncoupling tab is located on the underside of the truck. 

Lew

harmonyards posted:

Lew!......this is really awesome!.....thanks for posting this!....permission to use your idea!.....my layout is under construction, and this will be perfect for the yards!.....many thanks!.......Pat

Yes, of course, use the idea! That's why I posted it, in hopes someone here needs a solution like I did. 

Lew

Big_Boy_4005 posted:

Sold!

I was thinking of something like that for my hump yard to catch the cars at the end of the bowl tracks, so they don't foul the switches. I even have a half dozen Tortoises on hand for the project. You made it look easy. 

 

Elliot, it really is an easy project. Once the first one is tweaked to account for your roadbed thickness, decking thickness and track height you can bang them out pretty quick. One thing I ran into with the K&S brass tubing was a variation in diameter such that a couple of the 5/32" inside "plungers" had to be chucked in my drill-motor and sanded to a slightly smaller diameter to slide effortlessly in the outer tube. 

Lew

For anyone wanting to duplicate the device a couple details might be helpful.

The 5/32" plunger needs to have a relief cut (Dremel tool) from the backside to permit free movement of the piano wire actuator:

Not a very good pic but you can see that the piano wire actuator is thus free to pivot in the plunger.

Regarding control, Circuitron's instructions were followed. 14VAC accessory power from a Z1000 was employed by using 5A diodes and a SPDT miniature toggle switch:

Flipping the SPDT switch reverses the polarity of the 14V half-wave DC being applied to the Tortoise machine thus causing it to reverse direction and stall in the opposite position.

Lew

Brilliant! 

Nice to see some homemade ingenuity in this (sometimes too common) "plug n play" world...

Mark in Oregon

Clever solution to the issue.

I've taken to disassembling the couplers and smoothing all the inside latching surfaces.  You can usually get Kadee-like performance if all the interior surfaces are polished.

Obviously, your solution appears to be a lot less work if you have a ton of locomotives and rolling stock.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Clever solution to the issue.

I've taken to disassembling the couplers and smoothing all the inside latching surfaces.  You can usually get Kadee-like performance if all the interior surfaces are polished.

Obviously, your solution appears to be a lot less work if you have a ton of locomotives and rolling stock.

I was desperate for a quick&dirty fix but  that is going to be my next step. There sure is a lot of variability in coupling performance of Lionel-style couplers. Spring tension also seems to vary, especially of the horizontal coil spring that pushes the latch-bar against the knuckle.

Lew

My personal observation has been a lot of the issues are the molding lines on the moving parts of the couplers.  I have gotten a few electrocouplers to couple with hardly any pressure while still keeping them reliable for running.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Clever solution to the issue.

I've taken to disassembling the couplers and smoothing all the inside latching surfaces.  You can usually get Kadee-like performance if all the interior surfaces are polished.

Obviously, your solution appears to be a lot less work if you have a ton of locomotives and rolling stock.

Very true. I can’t understand why the manufacturers can’t do this as an improvement to their product. That would be total quality improvement.

For years the standard solution has been Kadee's, kudos to you for thinking out of the box!!  However, I want to add that there are differences in geometry among postwar Lionel, MPC, modern era, K-Line, Weaver, and MTH couplers.  As an operations modeler, @Bob (Pennwest) explored a lot of this and wrote about it a while back.  He spent hours tuning his couplers.  I suspect the mfr's don't do it because of the time and labor involved.

Bottom line- if the geometry of the mating couplers doesn't complement each other in a certain way, they won't close together no matter how much force you apply.  So if you're determined to do this type of operation, I would find ONE brand of rolling stock or trucks that works well, and stick with it.  (If you're willing to cannibalize,  you can always install one brand's truck on another brand of car.)

Thank you for sharing what could become a very valuable addition to operations-oriented layouts.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

My personal observation has been a lot of the issues are the molding lines on the moving parts of the couplers.  I have gotten a few electrocouplers to couple with hardly any pressure while still keeping them reliable for running.

Yes, the electrocouplers on my two MTH SW1500s work beautifully. They click shut at a nice slow coupling speed. I would pay a premium for freight trucks that would work as smoothly.

Lew

Ted S posted:

For years the standard solution has been Kadee's, kudos to you for thinking out of the box!!  However, I want to add that there are differences in geometry among postwar Lionel, MPC, modern era, K-Line, Weaver, and MTH couplers.  As an operations modeler, @Bob (Pennwest) explored a lot of this and wrote about it a while back.  He spent hours tuning his couplers.  I suspect the mfr's don't do it because of the time and labor involved.

Bottom line- if the geometry of the mating couplers doesn't complement each other in a certain way, they won't close together no matter how much force you apply.  So if you're determined to do this type of operation, I would find ONE brand of rolling stock or trucks that works well, and stick with it.  (If you're willing to cannibalize,  you can always install one brand's truck on another brand of car.)

Thank you for sharing what could become a very valuable addition to operations-oriented layouts.

Yup, every freight truck on the Plywood Empire Route is the MTH version with the uncoupling tab hidden under the truck. Even with this degree of standardization I ran into a couple couplers that simply wouldn't lock when mated against similar couplers. Close examination showed the coupler body to be shaped slightly differently than all the others. They went in the "to-do-later" box 

Lew

geysergazer posted:

I would pay a premium for freight trucks that would work as smoothly.

Lew

I suspect that's the only way you'll get them!

Excellent idea!  I'd recommend some sort of interlock so that a moving train doesn't hit the extended post.  Also, I'd recommend some sort of quick-change capability so that, if a goof occurs,  the post can be easily replaced.  

Overall,  a brilliant concept!  Kudos! 

Mitch

gunrunnerjohn posted:

geysergazer posted:

I would pay a premium for freight trucks that would work as smoothly.

Lew

I suspect that's the only way you'll get them!

An alternative would be for someone to manufacture something like this:

An adapter to install Kadee couplers on MTH freight trucks. It looks like 3D printing wouldn't work because insufficient strength so it would have to be lost-wax cast in metal.

Lew

M. Mitchell Marmel posted:

Excellent idea!  I'd recommend some sort of interlock so that a moving train doesn't hit the extended post.  Also, I'd recommend some sort of quick-change capability so that, if a goof occurs,  the post can be easily replaced.  

Overall,  a brilliant concept!  Kudos! 

Mitch

I've tried to figure out an interlock but it won't work because the track has to be powered to enable the very switching moves the device is there to enable. Of course the Tortoise machines have auxiliary switch contacts for such purposes. Since I have two of the devices installed on the mainline I'm going to wire red panel lights to those contacts to warn when the mainline is blocked. That is a project for another day when I getaroundtoit and finally construct a proper control panel with a track schematic and switches to operate track switches, uncouplers and track blocking devices.

Lew

Wow this is a great idea.  I think I would build on Mitch's comments and make the post out of something more flexible than a brass rod so cars could accidentally run over it without a derailment or damage.  The post just needs to hold a static car in place, so something like a plastic coffee stirrer (the little straw kind) perhaps with a few cuts to provide a hinging effect to encourage bending might be sufficient.  It could hold car(s) from moving for coupling but bend if it got run over by accident. 

Dale

If you want a bendable post, consider a section of spring with the right stiffness.  You can bend it over countless times and it comes back for more.  I think the plastic coffee stirrer would last about one bend.

I like John's spring idea.  As a bonus, a few coils could be unwound at one end to hook up to the Tortoise.  

Mitch 

I just installed a variant of the device. I had to work around a couple deck joists and an L-Girder by using a longer casing and a much longer plunger to get below all the woodwork. The only necessary elements of this thing are the plunger, the casing it slides in and of course the Tortoise switch machine which animates the plunger. In this case the casing passes right through a girder flange in order to guide a much longer plunger. A pic is worth a thousand words:

Lew

That is a great idea and great execution, Lew!!  Thank you for posting!!

Mark Boyce posted:

That is a great idea and great execution, Lew!!  Thank you for posting!!

Thanks, Mark. Anything to keep the old brain at work 

Lew

You are so right, Lee!  Sometimes I think my brain has turned to mush!

Just a note, but for the extremely frugal, some sort of a bellcrank and pushrod assembly could undoubtedly be easily rigged up to take the place of a Tortoise.

Thanks, everyone for your compliments wrt this little gadget. The greater World may sometimes look at grown men&women who play with toy trains with a bit of a jaundiced eye  so it's good to be able to share our hobbies here (and they are actually several that we roll together).

Lew

Mixed Freight posted:

Just a note, but for the extremely frugal, some sort of a bellcrank and pushrod assembly could undoubtedly be easily rigged up to take the place of a Tortoise.

Ya, I thought a bit about that but the Plywood Empire Route is a sit-down operation with hip-walls only 43" high. OTOH a walkaround pike would be well suited to pushrod actuation of these car-stoppers.

Lew

As a footnote to this project, the need to find a home for the miniature toggle switches used to control the car-stoppers prompted me to construct a control panel incorporating all control functions (except throttle as that is with hand-helds) in one place:

On-off-on toggle switches marked "U" control the various Fastrack remote uncouplers. On-off-on toggle switches marked "S" control the various track switches. The unmarked on-off toggle switches control the various car-stoppers. The indicator lights show track switch position. Although a track schematic would be nice I chose to go for minimum footprint and ended up with 4"X20" for my small pike. 

By way of re-hashing, the Tortoise machines that actuate the car-stoppers are controlled by SPDT momentary on-off-on miniature toggle switches which polarity-switch the power to the machines:

On-off-on momentary switches used to control Fastrack track switches are wired thus:

Bi-color LEDs provide route indication. Very simple wiring with a 470 Ohm resistor protecting the LED.

That's it, good people.

Lew

That is an ingenious solution! 

I recommend writing an article and taking another set of pictures to document the step by step process and submitting it for publication in the magazine!

-Greg

Thanks, Greg. Agreed, that for a tutorial I need to get better pics and more of them.

For example, one problem I didn't get into is that the fit between the K&S 8128 and 8129 brass tubing is really too tight (actually a manufacturing tolerance issue because the fit varies from one piece of tubing to the next). My solution was to chuck the 5/32 (8128) tubing in my drill motor and apply 220 grit paper followed by 400 grit to polish, thereby reducing the diameter a couple thousandths. I don't know of an elegant solution so I would need to include pics of that process.

Lew

Lew would the next size smaller tube work or would the fit be too loose in the larger tube?

This reminded me of a tactic I used while switching on my test track--sticking a finger behind the wheel of the stationary car being coupled to, making it a chock of sorts to keep the car from moving when being coupled to. A sticky rubber wedge on a stick could potentially do the same thing.

I wonder if an R/C servo and servo tester could be a cheaper alternative to a switch machine (although to be honest, I haven't priced the switch machine used here), using a single tester routed to various servos via selector toggles.

I can vouch for the complication of variable geometry of various brands' couplers, recalling my thread on tuning a Menards 24-flatcar set so their couplers would behave properly.

---PCJ