Tilting At Couplers

When I began this chapter of my model/toy train hobby, I had early on decided that my initial equipment, Kusan and derivatives, would dictate my direction. As such, things like boxcar size and knuckle couplers were what were being decided.

However, it soon became apparent that this path was not as easy as suspected. 

For one, I had deliberately designed my layout to include a switching puzzle, an Inglenook yard. This meant in order to perform switching operations, cars had to include working couplers.

None of my Kusan cars do. 

The equipment that has working knuckle couplers are a mixture of Lionel, K-Line, and RMT. I secured a large stash of Atlas and AHM couplers, but installing them on cars that lack couplers is proving to be a problem. Also, they have projections that hang down for uncoupling that makes their use on 3-rail problematic. 

Many of my Marx cars still have their patented Tilt-A-Matic couplers. So do two of my locomotives, specifically my Alco.

I decided to set up a now manual uncoupler and perform some tests.

In a word, flawless.

The equipment coupled easily, whereas the knuckle equipped cars have to be essentially rammed into. Uncoupling is a breeze as well. Plus, there are tabs on the sides of the couplers that allow one to easily uncouple anywhere. 

In other words, they work. 

While they may not look realistic, certainly, they do the job.

Now comes figuring out installation on non-Marx equipment. 

"Are you out of your Vulcan mind?!?"

 Two of my first O gauge locomotives were Marx-Tronic switchers. For the unacquainted (most of you, I imagine), these were the "train with a brain", part of an automated switching set. The locomotive was powered by a single D cell. 

And therein lies the problem. 

The old lead acid D cell batteries of yore were prone to leakage. As a result, you are hard pressed to find a Marx-Tronic locomotive without corrosion damage. 

In the case of one of mine, the damage was substantial.

But before we go into the technical aspects of these locomotives, there is one thing that needs to be pointed out. In volume 2 of "Greenberg's Guide to Marx Trains", the author states that these are Davenports. That's not the case. While Davenport did make a similar locomotive, this locomotive is based on a Vulcan Iron Works design, near as I can tell that was originally made for the US Navy. 

Not only that, Marx apparently based theirs on Lionel's. The Lionel unit on the left is a more recent iteration, but still uses the classic shell casting. 

That's the Lionel unit on the left. We'll talk more about that shortly, but as you can see, Marx was really cutting it close. While there are differences, the similarities are extreme. I wonder if this is part of the reason why the Marx-Tronic was only available for a couple of years?

Back to the corroded unit. 

Marx made two versions of this switcher, one where the hood slid off for battery access, the other where the entire shell had to be removed. I have both, but for this project, I chose the one piece shell. 

Trying to repair the old chassis was proving to be quite difficult. Even removing the driving wheels was a disaster, as one broke. In the end, I decided that the best thing to do with the damaged unit was to build a new chassis and redesign the model to run on 12 VDC. A Tamiya 70103 Universal Gearbox was chosen for the project, swapping out the 3 VDC motor for a 12 VDC version (FK-103 for the curious). Wheels are Marx diesel wheels. 

There was one problem, though - the axles for the Tamiya gearbox are metric, whereas the Marx wheels use Imperial "Standard" axles. Since the front axle was non-powered, this wasn't a problem. For the drive axle, I used thin aluminum shims cut from tubing and chose the hexagonal axle from the kit, trimming it to the same length as the Marx axle. A little Shoe Goo helps to keep the wheels in place. 

Also, the little nubs on the Marx axle were filed down. While these are used to keep the wheels in place, the chassis was sufficient for this. 

The chassis itself was made from heavy polystyrene sign plastic. The initial design put the locomotive too high, so the chassis was redesigned to fit into the locomotive.

What isn't visible here are the wooden braces inside the shell, and the T-nut at the front that holds the chassis in. The rear of the chassis is held in place by a tab. 

There were lots of minor changes to the design, such as the pick-up shoe (which is now two piece). Also, it doesn't have a lot of traction, due to the lack of weight - this will be remedied with "Bullfrog Snot" or something similar. Also, 3 oz. of weight have been added over the drivers, which help a little.

For now, stalled on couplers, but at least it is underway. 

As for the other Marx-Tronic Vulcan. It, too, had corrosion damage, but not nearly as severe. It was treated with Naval Jelly and a wire brush. The motor was replaced with a modern unit. Currently, it runs, albeit a little fast in my opinion. 

So now my line has three Vulcan switchers at various stages of operational capacity. 

May they live long and prosper. 

Consistency

 When I was a child growing up in Jacksonville, Florida, we frequently had to cross the tracks of a regional short line, the Florida East Coast Railroad. We might be stopped at the Greenland Road grade crossing, the St. Augustine Road grade crossing, but usually it was the University Blvd crossing where we'd be held up. The crossing was removed in 1983 and replaced by an overpass. This is just north of the vast Bowden Yard, where the trains were switched and made up. 

As the trains would go buy, being hauled by Geeps, or if we were lucky, the old BL2 or SW's, the one thing I always noticed was the consistency in the size of the cars. In the mid-1970's, you could still find 40' boxcars, though 50' and high-cubes were also very common. Except for the latter, they were all the roughly the same height. Also at that time, there were plenty of two-bay hoppers still being used in the limestone and sand trade, and for the most part it was the same - they were fairly consistent. 

This is probably a nit-pick with me on my little railroad. Because I am sticking with O27 track, I need to use smaller cars. My line won't be true O scale for that reason. The deciding factor was actually my first boxcar, the Kusan M&St.L 40 footer that I acquired with my first lot. Even though it isn't highly detailed, it does look the part.

However, it isn't O scale. It's 90%, in fact, making it like 1/53.3 scale. 

Since the die was cast with that purchase, it became necessary to find more rolling stock that would be consistent with that size.  This is where the problems were bound to arise.

Kusan is long gone, but its ghost can still be found.

I've read that Lionel's 6464 boxcar series are fairly ubiquitous, and their descendants rather affordable. The question was, how large are they? I searched all over the Internet, and discovered that too often people were measuring the cars in random ways and not body length. It was important for me to take a leap and just buy a Lionel boxcar. I found an inexpensive 9400 series boxcar from 1979 for the Napierville Junction Railroad.  

At the same time, I decided it would probably behoove me to look for other sources, and the one that seemed to be logical was K-Line. While as a separate entity they no longer exist, they did have a good run and produced some nice rolling stock. I found a "Los Angeles" boxcar that looked similar enough to the old Kusan one that I assumed it may have been from the same dies, albeit improved. 

In the meantime, I found another Kusan boxcar, which is missing a set of wheels. This would give me a total of four boxcars.

When they arrived, I was rather pleased to discover that they were all the same size as my first Kusan car. In fact, they all arrived on the exact same day.

But right away, something struck me about the Lionel and K-Line boxcars.

They were similar. Very similar.

Even in how they carried their trademarks.

I do not know the vintage of the K-Line car. Is it from post-Lionel acquisition? 

At any rate, at least I know now that similarly sized freight cars exist. 

And we haven't even touched my favorite cars, the hoppers, yet. 

Size Matters, Relatively

 When I was into 1/72 model aircraft and 1/32 (54mm) toy soldiers, I had a rule I referred to as the "10% Rule". In short, it stated that as long as associated pieces were within 10% of my preferred scale, they would be acceptable. There were fudge factors, certainly -  for instance, some old model airplanes were in 1/64 scale, which is 12% larger than 1/72, with some aircraft down in the 1/80 size range, with is 11% smaller. As long as two models of the same type in such vastly different scales were not displayed side by side, this technique seemed to work. 

In model railroading, however, this is a whole other story. 

Let's forget gauge for a moment and talk about the good old days of early mass produced model trains. 

Each of the major gauges have mottled histories. We've already read how O gauge is all over the place, but some of the smaller gauges also have had some odd scales to go along with them. 

First is HO. Literally, HO historically stood for "Half O", though there is a teensy, tiny little difference in gauge, on the order of half a millimeter. But most of the world acknowledges that in order for this to represent the most common standard gauge, the scale has to be 1/87.1. While they do make proper scale rulers, most people simply say that this is 3.5mm to the foot (here we are again mixing metric and Imperial standards. Alas...). 

Yet, some HO gauge models were not HO scale. For instance, Mantua's 4-6-0 Ten Wheeler is closer to 1/76, which happens to be another model railroad scale, OO. That's 14% larger. Bowser (formerly PennLine) produced Challenger 4-6-6-4 and Big Boy 4-8-8-4 locomotives in 1/96, about 10% smaller. 

There are plenty of other examples, but as time went on, HO settled down and stabilized*. 

As we've seen, though, O gauge has had a colorful love affair with scale, though things are much better today than they have been. 

Still, some of the compromises that have been made to sell O gauge products have been interesting to say the least. I'm going to use three companies to demonstrate - Kusan/KMT, Rivarossi, and my favorite, Marx.

Let's start off with a look at a couple of offset side 2-bay hoppers, one from Kusan/KMT, the other a late Marx product - 

The top model is a proper 1/48 scale model from Kusan, and scales out pretty accurately. The lower model is a very late Marx product, and is about 10% smaller in most dimensions. They both ride on O gauge track, but putting them together in a train would look... peculiar. 

Now, let's look at some diesels - 

On the top is a proper Rivarossi 1/48 scale Fairbanks Morse "C-liner". Below that is the first of our Marx locomotives, a similar but far more common EMD F unit in tin, but scale-wise is a mix and not quite 1/48, being, once more, about 10% smaller. Below that is our second Marx diesel, supposedly an EMD E7, but is truly all over the place. E7's were long locomotives, but this one is shorter. It is also not as tall, but almost as wide as the F unit (speaking for myself, I find both of the Marx diesels lovely).

So why did Marx make this compromise?

To be fair, it wasn't just Marx. While Kusan made a number of precise 1/48 scale cars, they also made boxcars and cabooses that were about 10% smaller. They also made a couple of diesels which, I am told, also have the same compromises. Apparently Lionel also did the same. Marx even went so far as to make tinplate equipment that was proper S scale (as opposed to S gauge) that ran on O gauge track. The reason for these compromises was to allow for the equipment to operate on a common gauge but smaller radius, less expensive track.

Due to my situation, I am having to look at those tighter radius curves as well, due to a severe lack of space. It is a compromise I am willing to make. More on that another time.

*Well, in most of Europe and North America, yes. In the UK, though, OO scale, 1/76, popularly runs on HO gauge track. The Japanese have used 1/80 for their HO track, as their national gauge is smaller, 3 1/2 feet (even still, it is not precise, but it is a compromise).

One Gauge, Several Scales

 O gauge has a very interesting history. I could go into that alone, but I'll keep it simple - it started in the late 19th century with the German toy manufacturer Märklin. In fact, they originated several toy train gauges, but here, we're talking O gauge, which is normally thought of as 1.25" between the rails, or 32mm (actually, 31.75mm). 

You might want to get some coffee, because things are about to get a touch complicated.

If proper O gauge represents what is normally thought of as standard gauge (4' 81/2" or 1.435 meters... and the topic for another conversation), then it should be to a scale of 1/45.2, or simply 1/45. 

It isn't. 

This is where it really starts to go, well, off the rails. 

Here in the United States and Canada, it is normally 1/48, or for those of us still using the old Imperial measuring system, 1/4" to 1'. 

1/4" is .25". 

This means that O gauge in North America is 5', 60", or 1.524 meters. 

While that gauge is in fact standard in some places, it is not in North America.

This means that people who use that scale for O gauge are in fact not correct to scale. 

In the past some have sought to overcome this by creating interesting ways around it. One was using 17/64" to the foot, which works out to 1/45.17... almost on the nose. That ended when a couple of manufacturers decided to just go with the easier 1/4" - 1/48th scale. 

But wait, it gets better.

The British, and to a degree the French, or so I am told, use 7mm to the foot (you'll find this peculiar mixing of metric and Imperial in model railroading and in missing Mars probes).This results in 1/43.5, which is also quite common for for diecast cars.

However (you knew this was coming), Märklin specified that their O gauge should be 1/45, the correct scale for the gauge.

Some true scale hobbyist are finding other ways to get around this, with Proto48 here in North American and SuperSeven in the UK. Here in North American, this means Proto48 enthusiasts use 1.1875" - 30mm gauge. SuperSeven enthusiasts? They use 33mm or 1.299" gauge. Not much trans-Atlantic cooperation these days where true scale is concerned. 

The majority of users seem content with 1/48.

Not all users, though. 

We'll touch on that next.

So This Thing Happened...

 Back in February of 2021, I decided to go back into model railroading. 

This is an old hobby of mine that I've done since 1973. Not always consistently, mind you. I started off with N scale in September of 1973, but reverted to HO when it was discovered I was being steered in that direction by forces beyond my control (namely Mom). This was concurrent with my interest in rocketry. I remained in HO until early in 1977, when I started building model airplanes and warships. 

Then, in late 1979, I was given a Marx O27 locomotive, and started looking into O scale. I even built a boxcar, but this didn't last long as we moved into a house where my bedroom was so small I had to step into the hallway to change my mind. 

Then, I got into HO again in late 1983 via my first wife. She preferred it over military models. 

And so it would go, between this and G scale, until 1999. 

I started buying some G scale equipment in 2017, and even built a couple of very early steam locomotives (one was a conversion, a static model of Stephenson's "Rocket"). I even built a number of freight "wagons", specifically four coal chaldrons (early British coal cars). But once more, there was no space.

An attempt in late 2019 was made in HO again, but was thwarted by a move.

Which brings us to February, 2021. 

Except this time, I went hard in the opposite direction - Z gauge, with Japanese prototypes. That was when I discovered that my eyes are better suited for my astronomy than wee tiny little equipment. The initial investment, some lovely Japanese made equipment from Rokuhan, was summarily sold off. 

Around this time, I saw on a certain well known auction site a battery powered set from a long gone company, Kusan. This had a little four wheeled locomotive that was a caricature of an EMD Geep, nowadays called a "Beep". It also included a boxcar, gondola, caboose, and a circle of track. 

It was in O gauge. It was also $10,

So, I bought it. 

Thus began this current madness. 

I don't know if I will ever have what can be called a permanent layout. I have some ideas about that, and I'll share them here. As it stands, I have a bevy of damaged, neglected locomotives and cars, courtesy that auction site, the farmers' market, and the local thrift store. Track is coming in piece by piece, and a transformer has finally showed up. 

We'll see what happens next. Should be peculiar  fun.