The knuckle coupler on the engine does not align with the car behind it--the dummy's coupler being slightly higher and causes an uncoupling between it and the cars at times. Any suggestions to remedy this situation?
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May need a little more info to get any help. The loco in question and the era would be help....a photo even more. And if it's too high maybe check and see if you can unscrew it and add a washer to lower it. But it really depends on which loco and era to be any real help.
Cannot add a washer that I can see after I had disassembled the truck from the chassis. It is an old Williams diesel that I bought used. I have no idea of when it was built or even the model number. The dummy engine is the problem. The dummy has been placed behind and in reverse of the front power engine in the consist. In other words, the nose of the dummy faces backward toward the cars. That knuckle is higher than the knuckle on the car next to it. My feeling is that the screws that secure the chassis to the shell of the dummy have rubbed a groove in the plastic bumper in front of the truck that just slightly causes the entire truck/knuckle combination to rise up. I am going to fill in that area and also apply some rubber compound on the screw heads just so that the truck will be slightly lowered in the front when the bumper sits on the screws. The only problem that I anticipate is that the rubber, once it hardens, will interfere with the swiveling of the truck as the dummy goes around curves. But I can always remove it if that becomes a problem. Because of the height of misalignment, I think a very small drop through the use of the rubber over the screws back at where the knuckle arm is attached might do the trick. We will see if this experiment succeeds.
How about placing the powered unit in back and the dummy in front? Just rewire the motor to start in Reverse.
That is what Lionel used to suggest to keep the wear on the gears "even" and you also usually get more "puling power" - alternate positions when you run the units! This answers half your problem.
Success comes in the most unexpected ways. I tried my experiment which did not work at all. ReadingFan and Surfliner really came up with an obvious solution that totally eluded me--just put the dummy in the front and use the powered engine behind it. Now that is thinking outside the box! But alas, all that did was cause the dummy to derail when it went around curves. I couldn't understand why this would occur. I decided to do radical surgery and took the front truck completely apart after I noticed that one of the front wheels was pushed to the edge, leaving a gap that would cause the wheels to slide along the axle in the front. This suggested the reason for the derailment. So I tapped the wheels together with a spark plug socket and hammar over the wheel on one side (the hub of the wheel would be in the center of the socket and so only the outer portion of wheel absorbed the blow). I used some foam for protection. After both wheels were moved more to the center from this process, I used JB Weld epoxy on the hub to prevent the wheel from riding back to the outside. After reinstalling the truck back together and placing it back onto the chassis, I decided to see whether this cured the derailment problem. Imagine my total surprise when I placed it back onto the track and found that the knuckle was now perfectly aligned with the car behind it! At this point my euphoria was tempered by my cynical suspicion that once I would install the shell onto the chassis, this might cause some abnormality that I could not have predicted. After re-installing the shell and placing the dummy on the track again and attaching the consist of cars, I was ready for a trial run. The powered engine started up, pulled everything behind it, including the dummy, which went around the track for 10 minutes without any problem--no derailment nor any disconnects at the knuckle. My question: Why would fixing the wheel on the side have any effect on the height of the knuckle? Anyway, thanks to all who provided the suggestions which I will keep in my memory bank for future use.
Maybe the coupler height problem was solved by the disassembly/reassembly process.
Perhaps the mis-aligned wheel was causing the truck to ride up on the track edge, there-by causing the truck to be higher and not aligned to the matching truck of the lead engine.
Strange and fortuitous circumstances can combine to solve problems. Glad that happened. I think Bob is right.
I hadn't heard about mis-aligned wheels on Williams products but I'll keep that in mind.
