I am doing a little experiment here. I have this MTL F7 A&B and it had the Marklin style couplers. The couplers made for a huge distance between the A&B units so I decided to do something about it. I used a piece of regular styrene and made a drawbar. How does the distance look? Could I go closer and still have decent operation? Of course I still need to clean up and paint. Any ideas would be great.
what a tease! I wan't those sooooooooooooo bad! LOOKS AWSOME! Remove that front marklin coupler lol its huge and looks funny
Since you've made one close coupling link, try running them on your tightest radius and if the two units don't touch on the turn, then try making another link with the screw holes just a couple of mm closer and then test run again. When the link holes are too close together, the units will touch on the tight radius. You now know that you must use the slightly longer link. Simple enough......you just have to have enough styrene, patience, and time to experiment.
Jeff, Look good. Like Loren said, it's a matter of trial and error. I have close coupled (and powered) several of my B units. With both units powered and wired together, it greatly improves the electrical pick-up and the pair can pull almost anything. Powering the B units was the only way that I could get mine to roll reliably. Dan S.
B unit... This is my first Z scale locomotive. I did notice the b unit runs terribly, I have worked on it some removing plastic and sanding some metal to get it better but a far cry from smooth. As a note: If you look in the second picture, one of the stirrups on the back of the A locomotive came to me missing and I made that replacement one. Not perfect but a good stand in. Could anyone tell?
I like your idea as I have two sets of F7 a and b units. I'd like get them closer together as well. The one thing I don't like about your drawbar is it takes away from the realism. Why not go to MTL couplers and design yourself a diaphram to go between the units? I think this would give more realism. And yes, lose those front Marklin couplers.
Yes Ken, I noticed the replacement stirrup immediately........ ) Truth be told, 'no' I can hardly tell now that I look at it carefully. I have done the same as you, only you did a much better job than I did. Maybe you've given hope to others who have the same broken stirrup situation.
I found that there is noting you can do to get the dummy B unit to run as well as I wanted and I tried several methods so in the end I put a power unit under it. It is not difficult, vut requires a bit of patience so sand down the side walls until the B shell will slide down over mechanism. I also created an FP7 using parts from several shells and then shortened the GP chassis to under the B shell and I used a gp chassis under the FP7 shell so now I have a very smooth pair for my passenger service. For the diaphragm I used some black coloured foam and cut and shaped it and glued it to thedoor frame on the B unit and it compresses on the corners so enhances the close coupled look. Changing the Marklin douplers is easy just replace the truck side frames with ones that have the MTL coupler.
This is all I have for Z scale. If anyone has some American rolling stock collecting dust and want to sell fairly inexpensive, please pm me. Looks sad running the locos all by themselves. The pickins' in San Diego are slim.
Garth, The idea of using foam to create the diaphram is fantastic. The compression of the foam would work extremely well. I'll have to try that. What kind of foam did you use and how about the adhesive? Krazy Glue? Did you use anything to create the illusion of ribs or folds in the diaphram? Ken
As a fellow San Diegan, I know about the slim pickens around here. You can find some nice ATSF box cars if you look on the internet. I like the ones with the large white SF "balls" on the side. Norm's trains Zscalemonster Epay If you are going to be running the older F-7, you will need the older freight (running boards on top of the boxcars and short tank cars).
for glue I used rubber cement as it had to stay flexible. I think double sided tape would also work. The foam I used was closed cell type that came out a train box. If you are using open cell go easy on the contact cement as you do not want to fill up the open cells. I used car stock as the outside cover of the diaphragm.
Although you made an excellent work, in my opinion they're still a little bit too appart yet. All depends on the curve radii you have on your layout. If your curves are broad (say more than 40 cm) you can get prototypical close coupling. As far as I noticed, you have to consider A-A, A-(B x)-A sets, with first and last locos back to back: considering the side louver grids on every unit, the distance between every unit's side should be about the same value than grid's height, on straight track. But if your curves are tight, what you did already shows an excellent look!:thumbs_up: Hope this helps, Dom
Same distance apart as the height of the grille? Easy enough rule to go by. I will try that. The drawbar was easy to make to another shouldn't be any different. I was then considering glazing on the b unit windows and perhaps some weathering. Oh yeah, I need the micro-train couplers but with the drawbar I onnly need 1 pair.
