A while back I made the suggestion that 3 rail manufacturers should go to truck mounted "scale" sized couplers, as a way to get the masses to accept a scale sized coupler and I got blasted on this section of the forum. My newest layout works fine with body mounted couplers so it isn't anything I need, but it would be nice to quit dealing with Lionel sized couplers especially on engines.
When I received the Lionel Santa Fe Map cars, I became obsessed with getting rid of the Lionel couplers and it spread to a more or less "Kadee Week", where all I did was replace couplers. The "Grand Finale" was the conversion of an MTH Alco S2, for switching duties.
In the process, I opened some boxes of Atlas freight cars I purchased back around 2004. They had free "adjust a couplers" in the box, which I had forgotten about. And yes, there was a manufacturer that tried to get 3 railers to start using scale sized couplers. I never got a chance to try them, and unfortunately, they were defective.
I wonder if anyone ever tried changing over to them and if so, did they give up because the couplers broke?
I pulled a set out of the box and then realized I might be able to use them on a CZ car. I had purchased a bunch of new Atlas replacement couplers so I replaced the coupler in the old "adjust-a" box, and it turned out pretty nice. It is one way to use a scale sized coupler and keep the ability to negotiate a tighter diameter curve, although 0-72 is the recommended min. curve.
There was no cutting, just a screw driver. It is accomplished using the freight "adjust-a-coupler" box, by mounting it to the adjustment slider that came with the claw. I can't test the reliability right now, but am going to run some of the cars that way for a while when it is possible on my layout.
A weird thing of note is that Atlas states the the min radius for the 2 rail body mounted coupler version is 36" and the 3 rail claw version is recommended at 0-72 (diameter), so it seems that there really isn't any gain, but I will experiment.
Look, I'm just throwing it all out there because I found it interesting.
CZ car with scale sized "adjust-a-coupler"
