Tuesday, January 14, 2014

How to convert your HO passenger car to Knuckle-Kadee type-Couplers


Many of us love the Passenger cars made by brands like AHM, Riverossi, Concor and a few others. They all have truck mounted couplers which allow for tighter turning clearances. Their price point for what you get is perfect. Some of these guys are not in production anymore but can be found all over ebay and at train shows.  You are going to pay about 20 bucks a car vs 80+ for new age Walthers passenger cars. Mind you the new stuff has a lot of bells and whisltes but to run a 5-10 passenger car consist is more than my car payment.

These older style passenger cars come with the truck mounted dreaded horn hook sytle couplers. That wont do. Even for beginners or children the Kadee type knuckle couplers are easier and well lets face it just look 1000% better.  Kadee makes a number 508 coupler that comes with a conversion shank     
that you can use to convert the horn hook to their coupler. However the conversion is very very time consuming and difficult. I have done it with moderate success. it always takes a lot of fussing and sanding of car bodies for clearance and you must cut sections of the truck apart..use small screws to mount their shank to the truck and dont forget about the glue when you make a mistake and crack the truck....its a mess. I love the all metal Kadee couplers but their process is just not for me.

I am not sure what hole I was in but my only excuse was that it has been many, many years since I had to worry about this conversion of a horn hook to a knuckle coupler but I came across a fantastic solution. 
McHenry Couplers. They have a long shank and snap right in where the horn hook does and has an operating knuckle coupler at the business end.  They make different lengths depending on which truck you have. For a 4 wheel truck on most concor or other cars you need the longest MCH 52 for the shorter 6 wheel trucks or the RPO cars that have trucks closer to the end of the car body the MCH 53 will do.

Right now they are tough to find but I did find a source for the Mchenry #52 on ebay.  This is by far the easiest way to convert a passenger car to a Knuckle type or what many just call a Kadee coupler.  They are compatible with Kadee and other Knuckle couplers.

Enjoy those passenger cars...I love that older stuff!