Bud and all, My personal experience in the area of "high and low coupling" (by which I assume you mean vertical travel between the two pulling faces of the coupler), even with HO scale SERGENT couplers, is that it is surprising just how BAD your track has to be before this becomes a real issue. A youngster in my new, HO modular group has built a module that has an area where I can prove my point; I will make a video on our next meet to show a significant amount of 'drop' (vertical travel) of the pulling faces of two Sergent HO couplers as the cars they are mounted on pass over this area... and yet the couplers remain coupled!
As for the gathering range... in the first place, as long as the coupler's centering spring is working correctly, it should take care of most of this issue, so there really isn't a BIG problem here, either. Yes, this applies (or will apply) even to Sergent couplers (HO or S), since my new draft gear boxes will have a centering feature tailor-made for the Sergent couplers. So as with the excessively bad track issue mentioned above, you'd have to have some problem with your couplers or it's centering spring for there to be a real issue with the gathering range. This does NOT apply, however, to couplers that do not have centering springs installed... in which case, you're just asking for trouble. Whatcha think? John Degnan [email protected] ----- Original Message ----- From: Bud Rindfleisch To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 06:02 PM Subject: {S-Scale List} Kadee 802/808's vs any "HO" coupler I haven't seen anyone yet mention one thing that could be detrimental to using the smaller sized HO Kadee's or Walther's clones, the fact that the head size being smaller overall would require very good trackwork and no sudden grade changes or the possibility exists for "high and low" uncoupling. A regular inspection and/or maintenance program to keep them perfectly centered horizontally would also help. Ed.L. mentioned the "gathering range" and as I recall that was one reason for making them slightly larger than the HO Kadee's with the longer pin (Bortz coupler) as at the time our track gauge was an issue. The NASG standards adopted were to address that and then the 802's came along. Personally I prefer the size of the 802/8's, the prototypes were big, and while the HO 5&10's maybe closer overall dimensionally, the prototypes rounded corners vs the sharper Kadee corners maker the 802's look more prototypical sizewise, (just my opinion). Bud Rindfleisch [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
