Next O Gauge train project

[pjdog350]

Come on you guys! Newly manufactured tanks don’t get ammo at the factory. Besides these Sherman’s have to get to Europe or the Pacific before they are load with fuel and ammo. Besides these are MY tanks and I don’t ship them with ammo. The can point the barrels anywhere they want.

I’m going to add more Sherman’s and Jeep’s. Jeeps are already here waiting for flat cars. New M4A3A6 Sherman’s are in the mail and should be here any day. Five more Sherman’s. The Sherman being added are die cast? They looked good on the picture on EBay? Hope they are as good as the Tamiya’s I currently have. Right now the army train is getting a lot of run time. Did have a problem with a coil wound coupler coming uncoupled? Ran it for the movie an hour but the next day every time it got to the west side (garage door) it would uncouple. I always thought the coil wound where bullet proof? Never had trouble with them. Not sure how to fix it? Not going to tell you guys what I did!!! Only thing different from the day I made the army train video is the video had 2026’s double headed. The next day I had the 2026’s triple headed. MTH Z4000 will not run double or triple headed postwar?

[Terry]

The weight pulls open the couplers. Try the car at the back of the train.

[pjdog350]

That’s what Jim said. I’m a little nervous to do that as that car is a 2411 die cast and the half track is die cast. It’s a heavy car. Much heavier that the plastic flats I got from you. To have it back by the caboose I wonder if it would derail the Sherman cars. I’d rather not have it if it would cause the Sherman’s to get damaged. I have it working now.

Thanks for the information.

[starfire700]

It really is best to have the heavy cars up-front. If on the rear, it can pull the lighter cars ahead of it over on curves and derail.

I have several problems with coil couplers. First, is having them opening when the shoe contacts a switch frog. It seems to be worse on 072 (T-rail) switches as the frog rail is longer and often humps slightly. If the frog rail is too high or a shoe is too low, ZAP, the coupler opens. Another problem is that vertical play in the coupler drawbar can cause one coupler to climb over another, especially with heavy loads.

I have some control over the problem with Prewar couplers. I try to make-up trains with alternate 2800 and 800-series cars, so if the auto coupler hood opens, the manual hood still holds.

The quantity of modifications I have seen over the years to pre and postwar coil couplers, wired-shut, glued-shut, tape on sliding shoes or parts just removed, makes me think this was a known issue way before us collectors inherited the problem.

I also like to run Marx and have a problem with metal auto tilt-type couplers on scale-series cars and on the cars we made as Marx Trains. The tab that hangs-down also contacts the frog-rail on switches, causes a temporary short that is enough to trip the reverse unit. Modern Marx motors have a neutral cycle between forward and reverse, but vintage Marx motors have 2-position reversers. This causes a speeding train to suddenly want to change directions, often not a pretty sight. If I bend the tab slightly this solves the problem, as I will never be switching trains on Marx uncouplers.