Apr 07 2009
FREE - March 2009 Product News from Kadee
FREE - March 2009 Product News from Kadee
Kadee is known worldwide for their high quality replacement couplers. They also manufacture ready to run (RTR) and kit freight cars and accessories in several scales including HO scale and N scale. Kadee’s latest offerings are announced in the FREE March 2009 flyer here.
Kadee continues their popular Sam the Answer Man column. 2009 March flyer has installment #29:
“New Products & Accucraft AMS Conversion”
This series is to help answer the many questions about Kadee® products and to provide “Helpful Hints” to modelers using our products. This month we are announcing the first official release of our kit cars, yes I said “KIT”. These are our 40 and 50 foot PS-1 box cars in an unpainted undecorated kit form. Painting and decaling (decals not included) are left up to the modeler. The kits are #4100 a 40 foot box car, #4105 a 50 foot with 9 foot door, #4110 a 50 foot with double door, and #4115 a 50 foot with the H-40 cushion underframe. They assemble “without” glue or adhesives of any kind. Every part is either friction or press fit, hooks, or snaps in place just like our RTR cars. See our web site at www.kadee.com for more information. Also, we are releasing our Whisker® #146 long centerset standard shank coupler in the continuing #148 series of couplers. Last month we released the medium underset #147 Whisker® coupler.
I recently finish a coupler conversion on an Accucraft AMS (American Model Supply) On30 box car from their 3000 series. Generally speaking, this is a very nice
model with very nice detail work on the body. However, I thought the trucks could have be done better. There are two issues concerning the couplers. First their
knuckle coupler is the absolutely worst I have ever seen. It’s a sort of an imitation of our #803 On3 coupler. It’s interesting that they’d even thought that any modeler
could ever use such a bad coupler. The centering and knuckle springs are so stiff that you have to use a hammer and a pry bar to get them to couple up. The trip pin
is at the HO coupler length for an On3 coupler and isn’t even ferrous metal to be magnetically uncoupled, although the spring stiffness prevents this anyway.
The best point of this is their coupler mounting platform. They were actually thinking ahead on this feature. They have provided two coupler mounting heights,
one for the common HO coupler height and one for the On3 coupler height. There is a spacer block for our standard HO #5 coupler and by removing the spacer the
platform is now near the correct On3 coupler mounting height for our #803. Since Bachmann made their popular On30 models with HO scale couplers and other
factory and scratch built On30 models use the On3 size of couplers, AMS has accommodated both those who wish to or have to use HO scale couplers and those
that wish to use the On3 couplers. So we recommend using our #5 coupler at the HO coupler height or our #803 black and #807 brown at the On3 coupler height.
Fortunately, our #5 and #803/807 (and S scale #802) draft gear boxes use the same screw hole pattern so there is no needed alterations or drilling and tapping
new holes. Also if the coupler heights are a bit off it’s rather easy to add shim washers (#208 and #209) between the truck and body to raise the coupler height or
a thin shim under the draft gear box to lower the coupler. Use our #205 or #206 HO coupler height gauge or our #815 On30 coupler height gauge with a #803 On3
coupler.
Sam the Answer Man will only be available after 1:00 p.m. PST Mon-Thu to answer your Kadee® related questions.
This column is typical of Kadee’s much cherished attention to customers and details. Their product line continues to meet customer demand and services like Sam the Answer Man help the modeler through the sometimes tricky coupler conversion process.
Have fun!
Trainguy
