A coupler on one of my 129 Saratoga coaches has broken. I noticed that it is attached by a rivet and I have no idea of how you replace these. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
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yeah, rivets are not very repair-friendly. First you have to get the old one out. Sometimes nippers work, sometimes you have to drill it out. Very carefully. To put the new coupler on, you have to decide if you're going to try to be super-authentic and get a riveting tool, or whether a #4 X 1/2" machine screw and nut are good enough. Whichever way, don't fasten it too tightly: leave it loose and let it flop around or you'll have trouble with derailments.
I don't know if you have access to both sides of the rivet, but my preferred method for drilling a rivet is to clamp a drill bit vertically in a vice, then hold the car so the rivet is on top of the tip of the clamped drill bit and use another bit in a drill to drill out the rivet from the top. I realize it sounds like a tedious process, but the drill bit clamped in the vice will help prevent the rivet from spinning while drilling it out. With a little practice, it works fine. If you just try to drill a rivet without some method of holding it, it will tend to catch on the drill bit and spin instead of being drilled out.
It isn't too hard to rivet a coupler back in place if you have the proper rivet and set. With practice, you can even set them using just a center punch to start the "swage", then a regular punch with a flat end to finish rolling it over... but I don't recommend it for a first time repair. If you decide to use a machine screw, get either a stop nut or use double nuts so that they will stay in place while leaving the coupler free to swing as Hojack said.
Would this repair be somewhat expensive though? I do not feel comfortable taking apart one of these and messing around with the parts.
Not expensive either way. Do it yourself, pennies for parts. For a train repair person, it's a minor repair.
