I went with everybody's coupler advice and put in Kadee 119s, and my problem is completely solved. If / when the carpet fibers kill my locomotive, I'll let everybody say "I told you so!".

Thanks for the help,

    --M

@mabloodhound: that sounds promising; can you point me to a source?

OldTimer, Mike, can you comment on the differences between the 118 and the 119?

@jward: I have not; from the pictures, it's not clear what, exactly, I'm looking at, or if they could be adapted. Do you have some? Could you enlighten me?

@OldTimer: thanks for the pointer. I may very well do that.

ABC: based on pictures, it's not clear that Kadee couplers will solve my problem; too much up-and-down movement looks like it could still decouple.

I'm aware of the extra maintenance issues for running on carpet; I'll keep my eye on things.

Thank you everyone for the thoughts. Putting plywood down, I'm afraid, would be a terrific pain, and my landlord might be suspicious of my drilling too many holes in his walls...

I'm curious to know if anybody has fabbed couplers that don't actually come apart. I'm envisioning something with quite a bit of give (say, a piece of wire or fishing line ), to allow up-and-down and side-to-side movements without coming apart. Modeling accuracy isn't a concern, as I doubt sofas at 87 times life size are a particularly common form of railroad scenery...

I'm looking for thoughts on couplers for running on carpet.

Details: I've encircled my living room with EZ-Track. Because it's carpet, the track isn't exactly flat everywhere, and stuff like to come uncoupled (I have EZ-mate couplers, as they came with). By eyeballing it, it's clear that the problem is changes in height (so that they come apart vertically) rather than anything else.

I'm curious how people have handled this before. "Put it on an actually-flat surface" isn't an option. I thought about epoxying the couplers together, but that just seems like a bad idea.

Thoughts?