Anyone know if Atlas will be adding their own hitches to fit their own 45' & 48' trailers on the next BLMA F89J 89' Flat Cars ? Those smaller hole hitches that came with the first F89js suck........
We are aware that the hitches were made scale and the holes will not accept the kingpins of most trailers. I have our Product Development guys looking into an upgrade on this.
Would it be asking too much to make your trailer hitch pins to scale? The Atlas trailers were the only ones I had to change when I put my TOFC fleet into action.
Thanks Paul, that's good to hear as I own a bunch of Atlas trailers and would love to use them on these new cars...
The MT, deluxe and Trainworx trailers use the same size kingpin as Atlas. I'm all for scale details, however for kingpins, there just is no way it will work.
It's possible I had some old stock with super large hitch pins - all I know is those trailers - maybe a half dozen of 'em - needed to be modified to work. I cut off the originals and drilled and glued in an .030 pin, worked just fine.
A sore spot with me, those king pin receivers were not an easy modification. I'm also for scale details, but you had at least three mfg's that had previously established a common king pin size, then this car comes along with a different size. Thanks for looking into this, Paul.
Can you help then by saying what size hitch king pin receivers should be - as we are working on a range of different hitches for cars in the pipeline. We will have the following hitches including the ACF A, the PS hitch for the G-85, NR-4, TT-2 and TT-4, so ensyuring that trailers from the main manufacturers will work well. Peter Peter Harris N Scale Kits www.nscalekits.com
Peter, using a manual caliper I measure just under 1/16 inch, (>.062) I measured one Trainworx, one Athearn and one Micro-Trains trailer, I don't own any Atlas. Sorry I can't be more precise, as I don't own a digital micrometer, hopefully, someone else can chime in with those numbers.
While the hitch thing was annoying, there simply is not enough coupler swing in these cars - the box is too narrow and the shank is too short. Beautiful looking cars, but unless you've got over 15" curves, you'll be rerailing them on a regular basis. I'm running MT, BLMA, Trainworx, and N Scale Kits 89-footers, and only these cars have this problem - and there's just no easy fix. That short shank also makes them far more prone to stringlining in a longer train. You can drill a bigger hole in a hitch if you want it bad enough, but I ended up selling mine due to this specific problem with couplers.
Hi Peter, Trainworx uses a 2 mm diameter hole for the fifth wheel plate on the semi-tractors, and that will be sufficient to accommodate all of the plastic king pins I have measured, except for one manufacturer. (1.9 mm diameter would also be sufficient for all but one manufacturer.) Also, I am emailing you my Excel spreadsheet with this information that I promised you many months ago. Sorry for the long delay. It is still not 100% complete, but it probably never will be. Back to the topic of this thread, I know most modelers prefer to go with the "factory" king pins, but I found out many years ago there was just too much variation in diameter. Therefore, some of us have replaced the plastic kin pins with metal ones. My standard is 0.035 inches in diameter, which can be achieved using brass rod or Atlas track nails. And, I also found it much easier to make a hole that is too small larger than to make a hole that is too large smaller. Carter
