Which couplers do you prefer?

[jward]

Any one here ever use "Baker" couplers? Or dummy couplers?

One of my first jobs was working for a man who had a model railroad built into a truck trailer. We would display it at fairs and festivals and charge people a buck to see it. Since we ran fixed consists, we used dummy couplers. His system was to take two couplers and solder them together. The ones he used were made of brass. One end of the double coupler was screwed to the car or locomotive floor like a regular coupler. The other end hooked onto a post mounted underneath the car is coupled to. The setup was similar to the drawbar between many Steam locomotives and tenders, and just as reliable.

He also had a hidden staging yard in the back of the layout under a mountain, where the switches were automatic, operated by reed switches triggered by magnets on the last car of each train. The switches were also power routing, so that when a train got into the clear on one of the yard tracks, the magnet tripped the reed switch, which simultaneously turned off power to the arriving train, lined the switches for the next train, and powered up that track. It was an ingeneous system that worked very well for us.

[Trainman203]

My dad took me to see a truck trailer layout when I was around 5 or 6.  But that was in 1953 or 1954 and 1200 miles from your area so it certainly was not the same guy.  I'll never forget it.  It parked on Main Street right in front of the old police station and a mob of people lined up to see it.  It was very small trains, probably HO, and I was amazed by the realism of everything , especially the track and the cabooses.  It never came back again and I always wondered what happened to it.

We entered the back and came out the front and I've always wondered what the track plan was to allow one way foot traffic through and maximize the layout space.

[jward]

Ours took up most of the trailer, and we had windows cut into the side of the trailer to view it. There was a retractable awning on the side of the trailer that we used to control both access to and lighting of the layout. He also had an ingenious system of four electric jacks, one at each corner of the layout, that was used to level it no matter where the trailer was parked.

[Geeraider]

I prefer the Kadie knuckle style couplers they're pretty reliable and as long as you have them lined up they act pretty good and they resemble the real thing and Kadie makes couplers that works off DCC now where you can uncouple

[Will3iamLuvzTrainz]

I prefer the Horn-Hook couplers to all else. I feel much more comfortable with those and they're less likely to in couple. Yes they're less realistic than the knuckle couplers but I feel like the knuckle couplers unhook more easily.

I even removed my Knuckle couplers from all my Walter's Amtrak Superliner cars, and the locomotive they came with, and replaced them all with Bachmann Horn-Hook couplers and they seem to work better.

Again, less realistic than knuckle couplers but they work better for me and I'm most comfortable using those!

[OLDERTIMER]

Hi guys, I'm back.
KD , Easy Mate, McHenry.  horn hook? psh.......ugh!!!!!

[rogertra]

Kadee.   Simple as that

[Trainman203]

Not all knuckle couplers are Kadees, and most non Kadee knuckle couplers in my experience seem to have some kind of operational issue.  Kadees themselves are metal, and of an alloy that is relatively slippery, meaning that Kadees couple up to each other smoothly with little pressure needed, which allows smooth slow speed switching.  Cars from a very large extremely well known Midwestern distributor have metal knuckle couplers but for some reason they don't like to couple to anything else, including other Walthers couplers, without a pretty hard hit at a scale 20 mph or so. I haven't yet figured out if it's the metal or coil knuckle springs that are too strong.  I have to think it's the springs because no amount of Kadee graphite lubricant helps.  I will soon try spring replacement and report back.

Then there are the plastic knuckle couplers.  To save costs, some have a little plastic finger instead of a metal coil spring to hold the knuckle closed.  These are train set level items that will soon fail due to the finger fatiguing, and will not stay coupled.  These should be replaced with metal/coil spring couplers ASAP.  There are plastic couplers with metal coil springs also, and this is the kind the Bach Man uses.  The only problem I've had with them is that, like the  metal ones the Midwestern Distributor uses, they don't couple up well without a hard hit either.

Kadee had a patent once on HO knuckle couplers and when it expired all of the less than excellent wannabe quasi-copies came in.  The upside is that the cheaper knuckle couplers began to appear on RTR cars and on train sets, making the Kadee design industry standard ..... even if not as operationally excellent as the original.