Hi, I have had several Accumate trip pins fall out of the couplers. This is on both Locomotives and Rolling Stock. If I happen to find them, because they seem to vanish into thin air, they will not stay when reinstalled. I can't believe that I'm the only one that this problem, so what are the rest of you doing to prevent or repair this problem? Do I need to change the Accumates to Micro-Trains? Thanks, Gary
I have the same problem also. I've tried putting them back in just to have them fall out again. As far as finding them, I just run my Kato well cars around my layout a few times. The missing trip pins can then be found on the bottom of the well car almost 98% of the time. I am kinda stalling on converting to Microtrains as I thought the Mchenry couplers would be available. Luckily I do not have that many left to convert to something other than the accumates. B
Unless you are using automatic uncoupling...as oppossed to manual...trip pins are NOT even necessary. Some will say that if you squint your eyes and turn your head at a 43 degree angle...the trip pins look somewhat like airhoses between cars. LOL. I had problems with trip pins loosening up and slipping down. They would eventually and invariably catch on a switch and half the consist would then derail !!! A BFH may be needed to keep em in if you are so inclined...JMO .
Trip pins falling out used to happen with the first Accumates, the later ones (i.e. current) did not have this kind of problem, or considerably less than the old ones. I had this problem with same early production cars, and a Baldwin VO-1000, but not with newer ones. My "cleaning train" pushes a car with a strong magnet underneath to find these trip pins, but it is a long time since I found the last pin. Pushing back the pins is fruitless, they won't stay in the couplers. The only way is to replace the "upper half" of the coupler, which is the knuckle with the trip pin inserted.
I've had it happen and replaced the pin with a straight pin, cut it and bent it properly with the micro-mark trip pin bender.
Dropping trip pins and exploding couplers were the bane of early Accumates. I've never found a solution, except to replace them with MTs. There were raging debates on most forums about Accumates about six years ago. Taken in by the non-slinky effect, and the fact the MT did not supply low-profile wheels in bulk, I converted about 200 cars to the early Accumates. And they blew apart, or the trip pins dropped and caused some horrific accidents (in N scale, nothing is truly horrific; I mean the accidents in real life would have been serious). I was first mad at MT for making wheels that didn't run on C55, despite being Cadillacs of the industry. Then I was mad at Atlas for making replacements that blew up spontaneously and very unpredictably. I'm slowly converting back to MTs. The half-life of early Accumates is about five years: that is, half of them will malfunction in five years. Then half of the remainder will malfunction in the next five years (or 25%). That seems true to me, as an early adaptor with about 7 years of experience. The early ones still blow up, but not as frequently. Of course, the frequency depends on the number of originals left on the layout, and less than half are left. I'm obviously not a fan of Accumates because of my early experiences. When I buy anything with Accumates today, I swap them out for MTs immediately, before placing them on my layout.
I still have the intermittent loss of a trip pin. It happens mostly when the pin goes over an automatic uncoupler and pulls free of the housing. I have been using MT's as a replacement. I have found the pins at or near the magnets and even on the bottom of Consolidations.
Maybe I was lucky but,before dismantling my yard layout I had set up on my dining room table I had no problems with the Accumate couplers during the weeks I "operated" this "layout". What I found odd is my Accumates uncoupled 99% of the time while my MT uncouple 97% of the time.For the record I am using Kato's 2 1/2" uncoupling track (part #20-032). Once I get my permanent layout up and running then I shall see how these couplers hold up.
I usually either remove the trip pins or snip them off. The MTL's don't give me much of a problem but the rest do for some reason. Dave
Hi and thanks for the input. Found a trip pin last night with the cleaning car (has a magnet attached). I have no clue what car or loco lost this one. I guess it is time to invest in more MTL trucks. How long would it take to body mount couplers to over 500 cars? What ever it is I don't have the time. As said before they really don't do anything in the Accumate couplers if you are not using the magnetic uncoupling, which I don't, so why do I care? Gary
Ok lets say I get really proficient at it an it takes an average of 5 minutes per body mount that is 10 minutes per car 5000 minutes for the first 500 cars 83.3 hours for the first 500 cars 10.4125 days working 8 hours per day. If I was to do 2 cars two days a week (4 cars per week), like that will happen, it would take 250 days 125 weeks 2.4 years 20 minutes per week 2.4 YEARS!!!!!! Ouch. :tb-ooh: Gary
I had one trip pin the other day that fell out onto one of my switches. When i used the switch it shorted out causing the nearest engine to lose its programming and destroying the decoder. So off came all the cars with accumates until i get the chance to either remove the pins or the couplers altogether. Now i knew that the decoder was giving me trouble often losing its programming with such a short and it was inline for replacement but the trip pins are just a PITA. Dave
Gary, you sure like to look at things in a mathematician sort of way! If you have the couple of tools you need already set up or laying around the layout, then you'll get down to less than 5 min per car. And if you are not running really long trains, then gluing them on instead of tapping and screwing them on is quicker and easier. And alot of cars are not body mountable without fabrication skills, so you can cross them off your list, or save them till last. And just think, in 2.4 years you'll have them all done. Isn't there a saying "time flies when you're having fun"? Mike
