I have tried hot glue and rubber bands--and still the tinplate O-Gauge cars come uncoupled when they cross the switches. I really don't want to damage the mechanism--I just don't want it to work when I am crossing switches.
Scott Smith
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I have used very thin copper wire to tie the shoe in the "up" position to some success.
KDs!! Come on over Scott!
At our museum we found that the problem was at the ends of the guard rails, where the shoes would hang up on the sharp corners. We used a Dremel tool to round off the ends of the guard rails. There are a couple of places on each switch that hang up, but if you get rid of the square corner at the end, the shoes don't hang up or trip the couplers. This is with regular Ross switches, not the tinplate version, but I suspect something similar would work. You need to watch very carefully to see exactly where the problem is, then grind the guard rails at that point. Our experience has been that the problems are in the guard rails, not the running rails or the frog. Fixing it was a trial and error process to grind the guard rails correctly.
You can also glue the shoe in retracted position with super glue. If you want to use the shoe again later, a simple twist will pop it loose.
