newbie questions about N guage

By "connectors" are we to assume that you mean "couplers"?

If "yes", then you need to standardize. The best brand are those made by Kadee.

See: -

-- Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Roger T. Home of the Great Eastern Railway at:-

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Kadee discontinued the manufacture of N scale items when a separate company, Micro-Trains was created around 1990. Micro-Trains offers locomotives, freight cars, and a line of couplers...

Bill Bill's Railroad Empire N Scale Model Railroad:

Here are some pics of my modest starter setup.

Dave Smith wrote in news:4775b66c$0$25542 $ snipped-for-privacy@news.usenetmonster.com:

The big square hooks are Rapido couplers. They're at least better than the HO horn hooks, but still are pretty bad. Micro-trains are the more prototypical knuckle couplers. Most N-scalers swap the trucks with the couplers, it's much less work. They also buy bulk packs, there's 10 pair in each. (It's about $3 more per car, something I consider when at the LHS.)

Give the train a nudge. More than likely, it hit a section of dirty track. That's why those with big layouts want walk around control, so we can give our trains a little nudge now and again. Switching and watching out for other trains (no dispatcher) has NOTHING to do with it. ;-)

If your local hobby shop (LHS) doesn't have it, Walthers probably will. Chances are, if you ask for something the shop doesn't carry they'll look for it in the Walthers catalog. Most shops don't charge extra for shipping, the catalog price is the dealer's price to you.

Just a note: By "local hobby shop", I'm referring to some place that sells trains and/or RC cars or the like. I'm not referring to craft stores such as Hobby Lobby. A good LHS is worth its weight in knuckle couplers. :-)

Puckdropper

On 12/28/2007 10:33 PM Puckdropper spake thus:

Just one small note: the O.P. asked which couplers were better, not which were more prototypical. From the sound of it, he might not be all that interested in realism, but might be more concerned with operation (cars not coming uncoupled or getting derailed). So which couplers are better in this regard?

Opinion varies.

I've had SOME Rapidos that were miserable failures about staying together. Replacement Microtrains trucks on the same cars have proven much more reliable. In general I have had better luck with the Microtrains, but your mileage may vary. For some reason the trip pins on MANY of the Microtrains couplers I have purchased (replacement trucks and on assembled cars) are lower than they should be (according to the gage). Low trip pins can snag on turnouts, rerailers or crossings. Fortunately the trip pins can easily be adjusted. The Kaydee trip pin pliers work just as well on the Microtrains trip pins.

A few cars that were troublesome about uncoupling or derailing worked much better after a little weight was added, although IF you have ambitions about running long trains you shouldn't get carried away about adding weight.

Body mount Rapido couplers on large locomotives linked to the nearly universal truck mounts on N Scale cars tends to be a problem in curves. Despite graphite lubrication they sometimes don't want to flex with the car's coupler.

Good track work without sudden grade changes or angled joints helps prevent breakaways as well.

Didn't know about Kadee and "N" as I'm in HO.

-- Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Roger T. Home of the Great Eastern Railway at:-

When did they stop?

-- Ray

When they off loaded their N-gauge business to Microtrains.

Thanks. I had no idea. Full compatibility?

-- Ray

Yes.

Knuckle couplers.

About 20 years ago +/-5. The original firm split. The N scale part was renamed Microtrains.

HTH

But as I recall from an article in MR, there are Kadee/Microtrains style couplers available for Z that look much better on N scale cars. Although there might be an argument made that the overscale sized ones distract from the Code 80 rail.

Just as HO KDs look just fine on O scale narrow gauge cars, and are just about perfect scale size for S scale.

Actually, there were several sizes of these couplers used by narrow gauge roads, to judge from pictures, besides the link and pin style, which persisted on narrow gauge a lot longer than on standard gauge.

About twenty years ago. They split the N gauge away from Kadee into a seperate company.

Greg.P.

Kadee didn't "offload" N scale to Micro Trains. Micro-Trains company split off from Kadee. For more detailed history see:

Thanks.

Are you guys getting a sense of when it was I last bought couplers?

-- Ray

. . . sure do!

But as a recent Japanse proverb goes: One who only runs models of Shinkansen has no need for additional couplers. :-) Peteski