Hey all,
I finally took the plunge a few weeks ago and started converting my fleet to Kadee. Rode up to Legacy Station one weekend and got the coupler packs, along with the screws, and so far it's been smooth sailing except for the cars without the Kadee pads (Looking at you, Lionel!) I've got a tender converted, most all of my Atlas and Weaver stock has been converted, and next will be my scale milk cars and my Lionel Heavyweights. Wanted to throw out a big thank you to everyone involved in the pages upon pages of Kadee conversions. I admit, I am still lost when it comes to styrene spacer sizes and have not ordered any yet...but something that has worked magnificently is the Weaver coupler plastic. Some of the Weaver cars came with dummy couplers, and I've been cutting off the coupler bolster mount so the cars would still ride at their correct height. Those straight, leftover pieces of plastic make GREAT spacers. I also have been using washers for spacers, and they're not visible since they're black.
The only drawback is that it feels like I've kinda taken the magic out of our trains, but I keep coming back to how much better the couplers look, how close they are together now, etc. Once you go Kadee you start noticing smaller scale details that'll bug you if they aren't right...build dates, non prototypical schemes, etc...now to upgrade my shelf layout to O72 from O54 so that I can do the conversion on my Lionel heavyweights...they are the late 90's release that were released alongside the Commodore Vanderbilt heavyweights. I think I'm going to mount them to the coupler arm and leave them truck mounted vs going frame mounted on them; I can't figure out how ti do that, so the truck mount seems my most logical outcome.
Sorry for the long winded post! One thing I have learned for sure, though-once you go Kadee, it's game over for the lobster claws.
