Recently purchase some boxcars from 2 different manufacturers. Three AAR 40 foot modified boxcars from Intetmountain and three Margor 40 foot XIH boxcars Eastern Seabord models. Seems odd to me that the couplers would be at such completely different heights. I'm fairly new to this hobby and this is the first time I have come across this. As you can see from the photo the couplers are barely connected.
I'd suggest you get a Micro-Trains coupler height gauge: https://www.micro-trains.com/index....oupler+height&description=true&product_id=565 That way, you can see which cars are problematic so you can adjust the couplers.
Kiz's suggestion is the best. For the heck of it, I just checked my two ESM 50' X65 boxcars and they're perfect. I somehow don't own any Intermountain items.
It looks to me that there is a tremendous overall height difference of the box cars themselves, about equal to the coupler height difference. If it wasn’t for the fact I see the wheels touching the tracks, I would say it looks like the one on the left was put “up on blocks” so some hoods could steal the tires. Looks like somebody stuck a couple of stacks of washers between the car chassis and the trucks.
If you own a bit more stock than what you've listed and they all couple to each other at the same height then figure out which of these cars you just got is the furthest off and adjust with shims (assuming they are body mounted). I've built a dozen or so of the intermountain AAR boxcar kits where I've body mounted the couplers using MTL 1015 and their height matches the rest of my rolling stock. Looking at your pics it seems like the one on the left (Intermountain?) is riding a little high on the trucks. Maybe the truck is shimmed on the bolster raising the height?
The closer I look at the intermountain car the more I think I can see shims on the truck bolsters. Likely done to give more clearance with the draft box on tight turns. Get those out of there then test on your tightest radius track to make sure the wheels/trucks run ok without rubbing or derailing. If they do cause problems you might have to swap out the trucks with ones that have couplers built onto them and ditch the body mounts.
When I get home from work I'll check to see if there are shim and remove them. All 3 the Intermountain cars ride high like this.
You can quickly see from the photos that ride height on the trucks is much different. The car at left appears quite excessively high. Also, the lower car does look more prototypical. I would hope that when checked, (height gauge as suggested), that one is most correct.
Do what the Kiz says. Get the Micro Trains coupler height gauge! This illustrates one more problem with body mounted couplers. This doesn't happen with truck mounted couplers. Solving a perceived problem by creating other problems is no solution.
As these were just purchased new a few days ago...Should they go back to the hobby shop?...Is this a design flaw or just par for the course with some of this woo woo woo that you have to fix it yourself to get it to work right?
Since you're just starting out, it might be a good idea to return them to the hobby shop. Maybe you can exchange them for cars that come with truck mounted couplers... Micro-Trains of course, Atlas, Athearn, etc.
I don't have a issue with tinkering to get them to work correctly just thinking what to avoid in the future.
I don't entirely agree with this. Body mounted couplers are the only reason I'm able to add helper locos to a train on my layout with a 2-2.7% grade. With truck mounted couplers, adding helpers only caused frequent derailments. And, while I don't do a lot of train backing, I understand that body mounts help in the same way here too.
If the trucks are not shimmed it may be that the molded floor is too thick where the coupler bolsters get mounted. You may have to trim the height by sanding or even cutting off the excess with a razor saw to lower the body. If you find that's the case I would return them, as it sounds like a design defect to me. Plus this might cause the coupler to bind on sharp radius turns as it may no longer clear other details molded into the floor unless you trim them too.
It's only a problem if they are designed or mounted wrong. None of the cars I have with truck mounted couplers have this problem.
Bought new, right? There is something wrong with that Intermountain car, if it was bought new like that, then either it was assembled wrong or it's a faulty design. A coupler height gauge is not a bad investment because it does make it easier to check, but it's not really necessary. The vertical centerline of the coupler knuckle is supposed to 0.216 ± 0.01 inches above the railhead. That is the NMRA standard, so there is no reason for a manufacturer to not get that right. If that's the way they are designed, I would return them, even if easily fixed, unless I just had to have those cars, because keeping them would be supporting the manufacture of non standard cars.
Unfortunately you will find such variants, straight from the factory. Usually not any assembly issue, just not well designed. BTW, all- Look more closely at the left hand car- It has TRUCK mounted couplers.
I wonder if the coupler pocket on the truck somehow got bent up a bit. Maybe a little pressure down on the coupler pocket might help. That said, if the dealer won't exchange the car, I'd opt for Micro-Trains bettendorf trucks w/couplers.
