A friend sent this to me. New video from just last week. [video=youtube;xZ9Yo5Kf7Po]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ9Yo5Kf7Po[/video] Disclaimer- I have no affiliation. This just struck me as something interesting.
I've been half tempted to convert my home fleet to kadee scale couplers and install these on the cars as well.
What a great idea. Wonder what the tolerances are, I guess they must be fairly accurately aligned for the magnets to attract. It says cars can be turned 180 deg. so it is not just a case of a north pole magnet on one end and south on the other. Hmmm.....:question: Edit: Another thought - some cars have extremely free-rolling trucks, so would the pipes seperate without pulling the car along?
Saw this in this months Model Railroad Hobbyist online Mag. Most intriguing. Rare Earth magnets? Does it operate by a signal sent by DCC? Compatible with magnetic uncouplers? (rather than the meat skewer).(might get tangled up with those) More info needed.
When I was building #1 gauge for a living, I fitted couplable air hoses. They had lost wax brass fittings with fine rubber tubing for the pipe. They actually coupled together by twisting them just as in the real thing. Made a huge difference to appearance. So if it can be done in the smaller scales it would be a geat advance in realism.
When I read up on these, they had used non-polarized magnets. I would assume that some drag in the sidings would be required, in the video you can see the cars move a little bit when the slack is run out.
I rank this up there with DCC uncoupling.......cutesy, but don't expect to see them on a "serious' operations oriented layout. They do have a bit of "wow" factor, but I personally wouldn't invest in them. But that's what makes our hobby great, if this and DCC uncoupling floats your boat then you can dive in with both feet. We are free to pick and choose what appeals to us. 2slim
I quite like the idea of these on my locos, will make multiple unit consists look better, just need the same with mu hoses...
And one more item is added to my Empire Builder/Morning Zephyr detail list. Totally going to take rapido's air hoses off now.
Those things look great, definitely a wow factor on the detail. I won't be switching over though, can't justify it when the priority is to have properly working knuckle couplers on all rolling stock, period - as well as metal wheels on everything. Plus, it seems like a feature that you'd want to have on everything or nothing. The $$ needs to go elsewhere hboy:
I wonder if you could use N scale ones for the MU's, and the HO ones for the brake pipe? Anyone seen what the prices are?
An issue for me would be the availability of these over here in England, the postage often kills buying from the USA.
Here is a review of them. [video=youtube;fv7AbCzuJmg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv7AbCzuJmg[/video]