Which couplers do you prefer?

[Trainman203]

There's a holdout for the old horn hooks in another thread.  If you prefer these couplers, or prefer couplers other than the predominant Kadee inspired knuckle couplers, tell us why.

[RAM]

Well my guess is I have 25 cars and they all have X couplers and I don't want to change.   Over the years I have changed couplers 4 or 5 times.  It was just part of the game.  THere may some day be a better coupler than KD but I will not change again.

[ebtnut]

Aside from looking like nothing ever seen the real world, the X2F couplers are notorious for being pretty good couplers, but terrible un-couplers.  Have a train derail close to the table edge and its likely the entire consist will head for the floor.  Kadees are good, reliable, tough (in metal), and look like a real coupler. 

[Trainman203]

When I still had the X2F's, back in high school in the early 60's, I had a whole 7 or so car freight go down to the floor, right in front of the Midland depot.  To this day that awful calamity is still known 56 years later as The Great Midland Tragedy. 3 or 4 of those cars were the old Silver Streak wood craftsman kit built cars, they exploded on impact.

The Kadee  no. 5 was becoming industry standard at the time.  It took me a year or more to convert my 20 or so cars. For switching and local freight operation, which I've always favored,  Kadees would couple up smoothly at slow speed whereas the X2F needed cars to hit at a good run to couple, not very realistic.  Plus their uncoupling ramps were absurd.

[jward]

X2Fs good couplers? Are you serious? Have you ever tried to do serious operations with them? They'd hold a train together pretty well on level track, but would come uncoupled when you tried to take a heavy train downhill. But that was the least of their problems. Their fatal flaw was the way they'd skew to the side when you backed a train into a yard or siding. That problem was amplified when they were truck mounted, as most were.  Backing a string of these cars was like pushing on a rope. Due to the pressure the couplers exerted, every truck in the train was trying to ride sideways, and they'd climb the rails at any flaw in the trackwork. They were so bad my dad called the devil hooks.

Eliminating the truck mounted X2Fs in favour of body mounted knuckle couplers reduced derailments by maybe 75%.

The only couple i've every seen that was worse were the Mate a Matic or MagicMate couplers AHM and later IHC foisted on the public. They were sold as being compatable with both X2Fs and Kadees. That much was true. The problem was, they wouldn't stay coupled to each other. Any time you had slack action in the train they'd come apart. Have two locomotives pulling a train and the first one hesitates on a dirty spot, and they come uncoupled with the lead unit running away while the second unit struggles to keep the train moving.

[Ton N]

When I started with trains 60 years ago in Holland you had Fleischmann couplers and Marklin couplers.
Funtional but not very lifelike.
When i started with American train in the seventies, Athern locomotives and cars, you know the ones you had to put together and paint yourself, you had the hornhook couplers.
Also functional but not so lifelike.
Then a schoolmate of mine introduced me to KaDee.
The revolutionary lifelike couplers I always wanted.
For me it's a nobrainer, knuckleheads in 2020 are still the best.

Ton

[Len]

The first HO train I was ever given had the Mantua 'hook & loop' couplers:


The one thing you could say for them was they didn't force the train off the track when reversing, the way the horn-hooks that started showing up all over the place did. Then along came Kadee and I never looked back.

Len

[ebtnut]

Those old Mantua couplers were even worse than the X2F's.  It was rumored that you could pick up a train by the caboose and swing it around your head and they wouldn't come apart. When I got into the hobby in the early '60's the Kadees were becoming the de facto standard.  There were some folks still using the original MK Kadees.  These had a straight uncoupling pin that worked mechanically with a diamond-shaped ramp.  IIRC, these came out in the mid-50's.  Another coupler available was made by Devore.  It was a to-scale knuckle coupler that had a curved pin similar to today's Kadees but worked mechanically with a ramp to lift the pin, opening the knuckle.  They looked real nice, but their operation was spotty due to the mechanical friction of the cast metal. 

[jonathan]

I still have a few of my grandfather's old wood and tin kits which have the brass mantua couplers on them.

I got started at age 10, and the X2f horn hooks were pretty standard through the 70's and part of the 80's. By the time I was working on real layouts, I was switching everything over to Kadees, EZ Mates, or even McHenry's--all knuckle couplers.  My entire fleet now has some form of Kadee coupler.  IIRC even Walthers had some version of metal knuckle coupler that was nearly identical to the Kadee. 

Regards,

Jonathan

[Trainman203]

I wondered how long it would take for the old Mantua hoops to come up. The Official Coupler of the NBA!😂

Kadee's patent on operating HO knuckle couplers ran out a good while back, enter the clones.  I have an example of every one somewhere in my rolling stock roster.  I find that none of them couple up as smoothly as the Kadees, and some of them don't mate very readily with the Kadees.  Therefore my goal is to eventually get all the Grade A cars converted to Kadee scale sized whiskers.

Anyone here try Seargent couplers yet?  And the magnetic mating air hoses?

[jward]

Are those the ones with ball bearings inside? i've heard good things abut them and even seen demonstrations of them. They look promising, but the Kadees are a known quantity that give excellent performance so i don't think i'd ever convert my fleet. I would love to find somebody whose railroad is equipped with them and run a few trains to see how they perform though.

[Trainman203]

I don't know about ball bearings in the Seargent couplers.  Supposedly they are truly scale sized, very prototypical, and apparently have to be assembled by the user.  Pelle Sollberg, a top modeler and staffer at MR, converted to Seargents a few years ago. The possibly biggest drawback is that they cannot mate with Kadees.  Kadee design knuckle couplers are so entrenched in model railroading that I can't see them going away or even feeling any kind of threat from any other product no matter how prototypical or realistic.  I'm afraid that the Seargent coupler will remain an obscure niche product aimed at rivet counter type modelers.

[Trainman203]

Any one here ever use "Baker" couplers? Or dummy couplers?

[Len]

My only exceptions to Kadee couplers are a few 'unit' and passenger trains that are permanently coupled with dummy couplers. Only the end cars have Kadees on them.

Len

[ebtnut]

I've run across an occasional Baker coupler, though never used them.  However, early operators like John Allen and Whit Towers used them because they functioned quite well, appearances not withstanding.  Back in the dark ages MEW produced some dummy HOn3 couplers in soft metal that I used because there was nothing else close to scale.  Kadee finally solved that problem.  But again, back in the early days dummy couplers were used because there were few decent options, and also because back then for the most part simply getting something to run was sufficient cause for celebration.