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Originally Posted by willygee:
I have some scale MTH diesel electrics I would like to add a remote coupler to. the ps3 boards have the connector for DCS command and I have done this before using mth remote couplers. does anyone have any experience with these Atlas units?
I tried one, on the rear of a TMCC steam locomotive tender. Total disaster, as you had to slam the darned thing into a Kadee equipped car, in order to get it to close & latch. Totally defeated the purpose of replacing the big lobster claws, which also had to be slammed together in order to close & latch.
I finally took the stupid thing off, threw it in the trash, and put a normal Kadee coupler on.
Also, I'm not sure but, those Atlas "scale electro-couplers" will only work electrically with Lionel TMCC models.
Hot Water is correct, they are designed for TMCC coupler voltages, they won't open with the DCS coupler outputs. The PS2-3 couplers are much lower voltage and higher current, and only have about 1/3 the DC resistance of these or TMCC couplers.
I have a pair of these that came off a retrofit, but I noticed that they closed pretty hard. I can fix the standard Lionel electrocouplers to close very smoothly with very little pressure, never took one of these apart to see if similar repairs are possible.
I must have gotten lucky then. I keep reading that they won't work. They worked for me??
maybe there are different versions??
They will only release when the pressure of the cars has slack. You can hear me trying to drop a car while rolling and it stays coupled.
I've also heard that many require slamming and I believe that some are too tightly made. These ones close easily.
My mth couplers need a little forward & reverse toggling sometimes to release and thats fine with me. Do the atlas and mth ohm out the same? I thought i ohmed out a mth coupler at 7 ohms but not sure.
Originally Posted by Engineer-Joe:
I must have gotten lucky then. I keep reading that they won't work. They worked for me??
maybe there are different versions??
They will only release when the pressure of the cars has slack. You can hear me trying to drop a car while rolling and it stays coupled.
I've also heard that many require slamming and I believe that some are too tightly made. These ones close easily.
Just my opinion but, it sure didn't look like they worked all that well in your video. First, I noticed that you closed & latched the electro-coupler knuckle with for finger. Thus, they then coupled reasonably OK to the boxcar, although you had to push the boxcar backwards a few inches or so. Certainly not the smooth operation of regular Kadee couplers.
Originally Posted by willygee:
My mth couplers need a little forward & reverse toggling sometimes to release and thats fine with me. Do the atlas and mth ohm out the same? I thought i ohmed out a mth coupler at 7 ohms but not sure.
PS-1 couplers are higher ohm and similar to Lionel and work with TMCC.
PS-2 or 3 use different coupler and ohms less than 3 if I remember correctly. The issue isn't really voltage.
MTH shoots a short pulse of high Voltage. The issue is the short pulse doesn't seem to trigger the higher ohm Lionel or Atlas, unless you get lucky with a low friction and lower ohm coupler. G
I don't know why the pictures came out so large, they are supposed to be automatically constrained. Sorry
This topic has come up so many times that some manufacturer should come up with a working scale sized coupler. It's one of the last frontiers for latest and greatest.
Perhaps Atlas should look at it again with the new factory.
I haven't looked at it in a couple of years as I moved on to 2 rail, but I did find that some modifications were necessary for better operation. The first generation Atlas O couplers were too tight fitting when closed. Aside from the die cast problems, I'm sure that's why the redesigned the manual coupler.
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In a previous post I showed some of what should be done.
If you look at the pictures, they are of a newer Kadee 700 series on top of the Atlas electro coupler. The picture is looking from below the couplers. Looking closely you will see that the head on the Atlas coupler extends way beyond where the Kadee stops. That effectively closes the gap between the knuckle and the head. That is where some work can be done to allow the Atlas to work more effectively.
I never finished completely working it out, but what I found was because the head (not the knuckle) of the Kadee was able to move right and left when coupling it would move enough to allow the knuckle of the Atlas to slide in to the Kadee gap between the knuckle and head and thus be coupled. I had it working on a reasonable number of cars, but not all. Like I said, there was a little more work to be done.
I think it could be used for a number of switching scenarios.
Some day I may work with it again in 2 rail. It would be nice to have a switcher with remote coupling ability.
Originally Posted by GGG:
PS-1 couplers are higher ohm and similar to Lionel and work with TMCC.
PS-2 or 3 use different coupler and ohms less than 3 if I remember correctly. The issue isn't really voltage.
Exactly right, the Lionel and PS/1 couplers are in the 5.75-8 ohm range, the PS2/3 couplers are about 2.2 to 2.4 ohms.
