Anyone have the Kato Doublestack cars? Whenever it's coupled to the locomotives, the front truck has a tendency to derail when backed up. The trucks don't use pins like most other N scale equipment, so I have no idea how to remove them. Has anyone tried to body-mount couplers on these cars?
Does the problem occur when backing through tight curves or just anywhere? Most locomotives have body mount couplers these days. They tend to put a lot of side pressure on truck mounted couplers in tight turns, especially with light weigh cars. Maybe a heavy container load would solve the problem without changing to body mount couplers on the car.
Weighting the containers is probably a good interim solution. It's tempting not to weight them because the carbodies are metal, but probably a good idea. I've had problems with these cars when backing through turnouts, and also behind the loco going forward. I blame the Rapido style mounting of the couplers on the trucks; it's obviously not as forgiving as MT trucks. Removing the truck: The whole end platform comes off, you may have noticed. Remove the silver walkway as well and set it aside. Then gently pry truck and the platform away from each other at the coupler end and you should be able to pop the truck off without breaking anything. But my advice is: don't bother until you are really ready to take the plunge, because... As for the body mounting, this is definitely the most daunting body mounting project of any rolling stock I've ever owned. It's similar to body mounting on a hopper car or such. A couple companies make cast metal coupler mounting brackets for hoppers that don't come with anywhere to mount a coupler. Who knows maybe one such product can be made suitable for the Maxi IV. What I'm eventually likely to do is to remove the entire walkway that crosses the end of the platform (both the silver part and the unprototypical support underneath it), then create or buy a new more prototypical mounting bracket for a coupler. I'll change the walkway and handrails to etched metal, too. It's more than a small project.
Hmmmm.... Since you are the Container King, the Emperor of Intermodal and the Duke of Doublestacks I 'll have to heed your advice. I guess I'll just have to make sure my Kato Maxi IVs are not the first car of the train. I get the derailments only when backing up though.
An interesting problem I ran into with the MAXI IV set: I read the instructions that show the "B" hitch hooking to the "closed" side of the truck. After a frustrating few hours of following the instructions, watching the video and not being able to get the car pins to sit in the truck grooves, I placed the "A" hitch into the "closed" side and everything works perfectly. Triple checked the instructions and sure enough they were wrong. Curious if anyone else ran into this problem.
