Hello everybody as a lifelong O gauge railroader my wife decided to get into N a year ago we have a four by three layout and have been mostly focusing on scenery and detail for the last year. Have been to many local shows which we enjoy the most finding things and have gotten a lot of great deals U Unfortunately I was not knowledgeable about the couplers and it seems to me that we have a lot of rapido which are the half of a rectangle looking. I'm not really worried about it cause we'll just use these two fill up yards. Now my wife's steam engine Switcher which is a Bachman has hook couplers and so do the couple cars that come with it. My question is as I go forward any locomotives and any train cars that I'm looking for I wanna just see that they have a hook coupler correct?
Correct. And if you have a lot of rolling stock with Rapido couplers, you can make a transition car. Rapido on one end, hook on the other. You can create a handful of these so you don't go broke converting all the Rapidos to hook. They can get expensive (approximately $10-$12 per car). But going forward, definitely look for the horn ones.
You might also need to look at the wheel flanges, depending upon the track that you use. Older n-scale wheels typically had taller flanges which do not run well on Atlas code 55 track. Moose not familiar with other brands of track, so no know what other track might be an issue with the large wheel flanges. The rolling stock wheels are fairly easy to replace with smaller flanged wheels. Just added cost and effort to find the correct replacement wheels.
I would be looking at converting to Micro Trains (MT) couplers as soon as you can they are the best IMO.
Moose agree, IMHO (In Moose's Humble Opinion). However, some older Rapido couplers are easier to convert to FVM (Fox Valley Models brand) or similar knuckle couplers. Here's a website that discusses some different couplers: http://www.ngaugelayouts.com/N-scale-couplers.html
Allow me to interject a few things here for clarification purposes. I'm seeing a pattern show up with the names that are being used that is NOT consistent. Coupler type and their common names. This the Rapido coupler (used for N scale) This is Horn Hook coupler (used for HO scale, not what you want!) Operating knuckle couplers that most N scalers are using these days are any of these. These are several different versions of the N scale OPERATING Knuckle couplers: These are NON-Operating N scale Knuckle couplers (Dummy Couplers). These will simply replace the Rapido couplers, most folks will basically use for cars that will not need to be uncoupled all the time, such as Unit Coal trains, but not always. Hope this helps to clear things up?
I think my game plan is going to be to find some new style hook type cabooses that have screw on trucks and I’ll unscrew the back truck and put it on to one of my rapidos cars as a transition car, but mostly I’ll just have them sitting in a yard. but it’s all part of the hobby even in O scale, you live and learn. Thank you everybody Joe
