Couplings Don't Match :(

[Richard Boddington]

Greetings,

I have the Ontario GO Transit GP40 here and the passenger cars that go with it, three cars. Problem is the coupling on the cars is much higher than the coupling on the rear of the engine!!

The car couplings, all of them, sit above the engine coupling. Making it impossible to connect the cars to the loco.

I have two other locos here, tried them, and it's the same problem. The couplings on all of GO transit cars are too high. The GO cars themselves stay together fine as they pulled around the track by hand.

Any suggestions on what can be done about this. Besides doing a gerry rig wire job from the loco to the cars? Are there couplings that can be installed that will be lower?

I really think the manufacturer of the cars, Athearn, dropped the ball here. Very disappointing

Thanks
R,

 

[kenw]

you can fix this a couple of different ways. One is to use offset couplers, assuming you have Kadees installed already. If not, then you can convert them to Kadees and use offset couplers on the cars to make the align. IIRC, Kadee offset couplers have a variety of different amounts of offset, so you will need to know how much difference there is between the 2 heights.

You can fix only the one coupler on the 1st car, but it will always have to be the 1st car, or you can fix all of them so that they can be mixed and matched without issues later. The cost is pretty low.

 

[CBCNSfan]

I really think the manufacturer of the cars, Athearn, dropped the ball here.

Another question What make or makes are the loco's? If they are trainset quality then it a good possibility they are at fault.
Here's a link to Kadee couplers, this sheet gives the measurements for the height of the couplers to the rail head.
http://www.kadee.com/html/3-20.pdf

Cheers
Willis

 

[Richard Boddington]

Thanks I'll look at the offset couplers from KD, fixing the first car will be fine with me.

I did get a response from Athearn, they suggested I check the coupler heights with a height gauge. What good that will do I don't know, when all four of my engines won't match up it's obvious where the fault lies.

The GP40 GO loco was a stand alone engine not part of a set made by True Line Trains. The CN loco was also a stand alone metal train made by Model Power. Both of these engines pull all of my other cars just fine, plastic or metal.

Thanks
Richard,

 

[Cjcrescent]

Checking the coupler height with a gauge will tell you what is higher or lower than the recommended height above the rails. Once you find this out, you can see what needs to be done, lower the cars coupler or raise the engines.

 

[Richard Boddington]

I just ordered a coupling that goes up and one that goes down from KD. This way I'm covered both ways They are not exactly expensive items that cost a lot to ship so no big deal.

Thanks for the leads!! You guys are a big help as always!

R,

 

[ken_23434]

I just ordered a coupling that goes up and one that goes down from KD. This way I'm covered both ways They are not exactly expensive items that cost a lot to ship so no big deal.

Thanks for the leads!! You guys are a big help as always!

R,

If your engines match the rest of your cars, then I would just fix the cars in question. To be cheap, you could get away with fixing only one end of the lead car. Not exactly "correct" but as long as one end will match up to your loco, then there is not problem. (unless you try to couple to the rear of that car or one of the other 2).

I had an issue with one of my box cars with it's coupler being too high. I bought this one used. I noticed it seemed there was too much clearance between the top of the trucks and the bottom of the car. I pulled off the trucks and noticed there was a built-in spacer on top of those trucks. I put on another set of trucks. The coupler was now at the correct height, and the clearance between the trucks and the car looked "correct". I don't know if that distance is "correct" or not, but it looks right to me. That, and it would couple up with the rest of my rolling stock so I was happy.