i have kadee's on most of my rolling stock. i also have just weighted my cars. since i have done that the cars will hump during travel at a slow speed. is there any way of taking the slack out of the couplers so this does not happen.
Original Post
Replies sorted oldest to newest
BillG posted:i have kadee's on most of my rolling stock. i also have just weighted my cars. since i have done that the cars will hump during travel at a slow speed.
Please explain this further, as "humping cars" is a real railroad term for pushing freight cars over a large earthen "hump" in the freight yard, and allowing them to roll down the hill into various classification tracks.
is there any way of taking the slack out of the couplers so this does not happen.
Kadee couplers have "slack" built into their gear box so that the act more like real railroad couplers. Removing that slack would tend to defeat the purpose of "realistic operating" Kadee couplers, in my opinion.
I am guessing that what the OP really means is he is getting the “slinkey effect”. Minor slack opening and closing between the cars.
Again, it is only a guess. Either that or a couple of cars are in heat.
Doubling the inside draft gear spring will help reduce the slack action while still retaining the uncoupling action. I've done this on my S Scale models and it has reduced the bouncing.
Rusty
i will give that a try. thank you.
The Kadee instruction sheet used to show you how to eliminate much of that slack if you don't want it. They might still show you but I haven't looked at a set in years. Basically you cut a small rod to fit inside the spring, just a tad shorter than the spring, and that will eliminate most of the slack. A real standard box car without a cushion underframe, doesn't have a lot of slack anyway. Most of the slack comes from the knuckle, whether the cars are bunched up or stretched out. That being said, I use the Kadee draft gear box as intended. When you have a big cut of cars and start from a dead stop on level track, it sounds like you're actually stretching the slack out.
Also, when adding weight to your cars make sure you do it properly, meaning use the standard for O Scale. Start with 5 oz, then add 1 oz for every inch of car. So a 40' scale reefer is 10 inches long. It should weigh 15 oz... 5 oz + 10 oz. Always round up, better to be a little heavy than too light.
thank you for the information. much appreciated .
