09/22/04  

LGB steel caboose: Truck-mounted coupler & problem with coupler lowering out of position when under load: 

A problem I have encountered on some of the few truck mounted couplers (in this case Kadees on my new LGB steel caboose) is when placed under a load, the coupler and truck tongue will drop down out of position leading to the eventual uncoupling of the car to the rest of the train.  Compounding the problem with this particular car, the Kadee was already mounted a little low already, despite it being the correct coupler for the car.  Until I can body mount the couplers, I did this modification to the Kadee coupler to help keep it aligned under load....

I simply took the coupler off and filed the top of surface of the coupler that makes contact with the truck tongue at an angle so that when the coupler tightens against the tongue, it is at a slight angle.  Now, when the car is under load and the truck drops, the coupler is actually at the right height.

The other thing I did was to add a washer to under the center pivot truck screw to limit how much the truck could flex and drop.  I will post pictures of that later.  But the combination of the two modifications fixed my problems.  I do plan to body mount though...

__________________________________________________________________________________

Return to Garden Railroad Modification page.