U.S. Hook & Loop Coupler Source

How about a transition car, KD on one end and hook and loop on the other. I put KD's on some four wheel UK cars that work quite well, just remove the hook and loop and glue the KD to the floor of the other car. Roger Aultman

Len wrote:

Sorry, but no. There is no such item.

Puckdropper's is the only feasible one. It will mean sacrificing one of the Troublesome Trucks. Remove the hook-and loop coupler, glue a plastic pad of suitable size and thickness to the truck, and mount the KD on it. Make sure that the KD is at the proper height above th rail.

HTH

How thorough a solution do you want?

The hook and loop couplers are, I think, a fairly standard European coupler. The problem is that no USA equipment is designed to be converted to that type of coupler.

If these are in fact standard European couplers, then KD makes a coupler that will convert most standard European coupler boxes. You could make a transition car out of a standard European freight car or what have you, but that means trying to find someone in the USA that has such a creature in stock, and it means having another piece of equipment kicking around.

What I would probably do is experiment with a piece of wire, such as a paper clip. I'm guessing that you could come up with a shape that would loop around the KD coupler and provide a little bit of a hook into which the loop part of the loop and hook would couple.

The fixed hook/lifting loop coupler is the NEM standard - equivalent to NMRA.

Brawa sells LifeLike in Germany under their ownbrand-name and make a simple NEM 362 pocket which fits into the body mounted Lifelike pocket and takes any of the European NEM 362 mounted couplers as well as the Kadee NEM pocket couplers and the Bachmann British bedhead/lifting hook coupler. The Brawa catalogue number is 0999.

If that all got confusing =8^) the Brawa item is the NEM coupler box mounted on a short shaft with a widened bit having a mounting hole and two horns right at the end, sweeping forward, that fits into the usual Kadee #5 style coupler pocket that you find on most US wagons.

Regards, Greg.P.

Greg Procter Thou doghearted puke-stocking. Thou bawling poor. Thou senior-junior. Thou base foul stone falsely set., ye snickered:

Hello, Mister Procter. I hope life finds you well, hale and hearty, sir.

Not exactly - and you?

The Thomas & Friends line is based on Bachmann's UK outline models. Bachmann does not use the NEM hook-and-loop, nor does it use an NEM coupler box on this line.

Bachmann uses its own version of the old Hornby/Triang hook-and-loop, which is more or less compatible with Hornby's updated version of the same coupler. Neither are compatible with the NEM coupler.

IMO, Both Bachmann and Hornby would increase their overseas sales if they adopted either the NEM box and coupler shank standard, or the NMRA box and Kadee style shank. As the original post shows, people do want to run all kinds of trains on their layouts for all kinds of reasons, and easy changing of couplers would be more than a little helpful.

HTH

I was responding to the statement before my text. I haven't seen the Bachmann "Thomas" rolling stock but as I didn't make any statement in regard to those I don't see why you are responding as though I did. Most Bachmann British model rolling stock is now fitted with an NEM pocket, but there are two distinct types, one correctly placed and the other mounted several mm too high. The NMRA box won't work properly with European stock as it is too high to fit under a European buffer beam _and_ most European stock has buffers which means that the average US coupler won't operate with sufficient space between the vehicles.

Regards, Greg.P.

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Wolf,

I agree completely.

Since there doesn't appear to be a simple solution to my immediate situation I decided to take the direct approach. I picked up a 2nd Trainline 'Southern' FB unit, and I'm going to hard mount a Bachmann Thomas & Friends hook & loop coupler to one end. I'll just swap FB's when my grandson wants to put Gordan's coaches behind the diesels.

Len

Greg Procter wrote: [...]

I saw a confusion between the standard NEM hook and loop coupler, and the style used by Hornby and Bachmann (which is a narrower version of the old Triang/Hornby coupler.) That's all. On the Bachmann/Hornby coupler, the hook points down, and lifts to slide over the loop. On the NEM coupler, the hook points up, and the loop lifts to slide over the hook. You can couple the two, sort of, but they don't like each other.

On T&F, Bachmann uses wider couplers than on its other equipment. Eg, on the Hogwarts Express, Bachmann uses the narrow hook and loop coupler. It doesn't use the NEM coupler box, though.

BTW, Bachmann's NEM shanked knuckle coupler has a 14mm shank according to my ruler, so it will easily clear the buffers. Kadee offers NEM shank couplers in 8.63, 10.76 and 11.68mm lengths. Both are underset. These are clearly aimed at modellers of European equipment.

HTH

I've seen a few conversions of European layouts to Kadee couplers. The reason that I was told for these conversions had to do with Kadee couplers operating a bit more reliably (in the opinion of the layout owners) and the fact that while Kadee couplers don't look realistic on European equipment, they certainly look a lot more railroad-like than the giant hook and loop couplers.

So, in certain cases it can be done and has been done.

OK.

I tried to make a statement that stood on it's own about NEM/European standard couplers. Britain of course has always been separate from "Europe" and it's railways/model railways/standards/lack of standards predates Britain's entry into the EU. It's model railway standards are separate from Europe. Bachmann does the hobby a disservice by calling the British couplers "European" in the US catalogue.

The point here is that, with the exception of British loose coupled goods wagons and "Buckeye" coupled carriages, all buffer equipped rolling stock operates with adjoining buffers touching and in compression. Running _models_ with sufficient space between buffers to allow for one's minimum radius curves places them at toy-like distances apart. Unless one operates a completely straight track layout a European Kadee equipped train is going to look toy-like. Kadees on close coupler mechanisim fitted rolling stock is a disaster waiting to happen if train lengths go beyond 5-6 vehicles.

Regards, Greg.P.

Bent paper clip connectors or tying ones rolling stock together with thread will also work in certain circumstances. Don't generally recommend using Kadee couplers (and/or their copies) to European modellers, because while they are excellent couplers that work well, they are generally incompatible with European (excluding British) rolling stock.

Regards, Greg.P.