Good idea about using 0.01 plastic so as to not short the rails. Or use the metal one on a spare/scrap piece of track off the layout.
In my defense....How many of us are running 75-125 car trains on our home layouts ? I do manual uncoupling with a 'pick'. I have never had any unwanted uncouplings with pulling the trip pins. That and IMHO...the couplers look better without that 'thing' hanging down under the coupler...LOL.
I run 74 cars so I'm good under the limit. I too use a "pick" to uncouple.....a (clean!) bamboo BBQ skewer.
George- I cut all of mine off and use a Rix Pick. Have done it that way for quite some time. I also model in HOn30 using M-T N couplers, and cut those off as well. It has been very reliable and I am happy.
When using the trip pin height gauge, hold the coupler down while checking to account for possible coupler droop. Doug
With my trusty super accurate Harbor Freight digital caliper (sarcasm), I got the following dimensions: 0.82 mm wide 0.58 mm high
On the horizontal part of the pin, parallel to the rails: 0.025" to 0.028" vertical 0.031" to 0.033" horizontal (parallel to ties) I measured 3 pins, in several places per pin. The variability occurs along the length of individual pins, as well as from pin to pin.
If you bother to do the conversions, you will see that the metric "high" dimension is outside of the range (smaller than) the inch "Vertical" range that I found. But, for folks who don't "do" conversions, there is now one measurement set for each system. (What model railroader doesn't need to do conversions, such as full scale to N scale?)
Thank you sir If the train scale conversion webpage I use it correct... using .026 as a a vertical measurement...that is 4.15 inch on the 1:1 using .032 as a a horizontal measurement...that is 5.12 inch on the 1:1 Averaging it all out to a ROUND air hose...that would make a 1:1 air hose between cars a whopping 5" diameter !! From another website... " Standard freight car hoses are 1-3/8" x 22"; passenger hoses are often 1-3/8" x 27", or even 29" " So in conclusion a 5" diameter 'trip pin' looks NOTHING like a 1-3/8" diameter 1:1 airhose !!! Maybe now people will quit saying " But the trip pins look like the air hoses between cars !! Rant over....thank you all for reading ! .
Shoving them back up isn't always an option. Sometimes, they're as inserted as they will get, but they're misshapen a bit or bent down. If you haven't had the problem count yourself lucky. I've had a few with bad clearance from various manufacturers. Usually, where I have run into this issue is in a club setting where someone is having difficulty with a piece of rolling stock, and so I go through various checks which include coupler height.
This all may be true. But if they were to be made scale it may affect the operation of magnetic uncoupling because then they won't have enough "metal heft" for the magnet to work on. Or they become too thin and delicate that they bend too easily. Then people will really complain about them getting hung up everywhere.
The trip pins are no doubt out of scale for air hoses but I'm afraid I have to doubt that "1-3/8 inch diameter" for a 1:1 scale freight car air hose. That might be the interior opening but not the exterior. I wish I still had one around that I could measure but 3 inches in exterior diameter is more like it.
You could always cut off the trip pins and stick some 0.008" diameter wire on the bottom of the sills. With TruScale couplers that would start to look "scale". But, those little plastic models of air hoses that come with the MTL TruScale couplers measured 0.015"- 0.016", which is like 2-1/2 inches, full scale. But, I think they still look better than 0.008" wire. "Fine scale" is a real challenge for N scale, especially if you want to actually run the trains, rather than just admire them on a shelf. Fine scale is fragile.
That dimension might be good for the MU connections, but you are correct it is too small for the train air line.
https://www.nyab.com/media/nyab_1/brochures/airhose/NYAB_Hose_Pocket_Guide_01-09-14.pdf See page ix. It says OD = 2.063" to 2.125", with ID = 1.374 to 1.438" In N scale, that's 0.013", so not that far off from the TruScale coupler hose parts I measured at about 0.015" Still darn fragile, though.