Regular readers of the blog will be familiar with my use of MicroTrains couplers on my O9 locomotives and rolling stock and how this choice was decided upon more than 20 years ago when I wanted to have a single bogie/coupler arrangement for miniature railway outline carriages. I have often wondered how I might cope with an alternative, with the Greenwich couplers I have used on some of my 009 stock in mind. There are even some half-started experiments tucked away somewhere...
Looking around for something to occupy me over the last week, I started another experiment, this time using a familiar wagon in the shape of a Black Dog Mining style open wagon. Previously fitted with MicroTrains couplers I filled in the 5 x 2.5mm openings in the buffer beams with Evergreen styrene and made good the joins. Opting to fit the Greenwich couplers at the standard 009 height a small recess was removed to accommodate the 5.5mm mounting height. A tiny screw from a batch I bought on eBay holds the coupler in place.
The angle of the photo above doesn't really do it justice, but overall the look of the coupler doesn't look too bad. I did additionally try an angled shaft for the coupler to meet the alternative height of 8mm for the face plate but this looked a little more clumsy. I had ruled out directly mounting the coupler higher as it would require a larger cut-out in the buffer beam or a difficult to cut slot.
Underneath there is another change...
As a further experiment 7mm diameter Matheson wheelsets have been fitted, requiring only a little cut-away in the adhesive lead strip underneath to accommodate the flanges. These wheelsets fit nicely and really improve the appearance of the wagon, this is something I will certainly be looking at changing for other wagons using this chassis.
I have to confess that the coupler used here (and the one I bent the shank on) were "borrowed" from an 009 wagon and just fiddling with an alternative loop with a longer dropper reminded me of the one thing I am not 100% sure of with these couplers, assembling them! Yes, there are jigs available now but I find that they are as fiddly as the MicroTrains ones but in a different way.
So will anything come of this? We shall see, it may just prompt some other wagon tinkering, again regular readers will understand the significance of that statement...
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