Coupler conversion

[Andreas Krause]

Hi all

I normally model German railways in N (and a bit of British). But at some point I could not resist the charme of an Atlas Shay. That's where the problem started: All my locos and coaches etc. so far had rapido couplers but the Shay (and a few wagons I bought to match) have mictrotrains couplers. As I use non-magnetic uncouplers (those that push a pin up), I cannot uncouple the wagons, obviously. As I do not want to put down additional magnets on top of the track (the tracks are already fixed and ballasted), I thought to convert the Microtrains to rapido couplers. While there is a lot of infos out the other way around, has anyone an idea how to do this type of conversion?

Thanks a lot

Andreas

[tworail]

Hi Andreas,

Welcome to the site.

I'm afraid you are in the minority with your problem there.

What to the coupler boxes look like on the Shay? Is it possible to take it apart and substitute a Rapido-type in there? I never used Microtrains couplers with my N equipment.. Although I remember from American HO scale that you could substitute Kadee couplers with the standard couplers quite easily, and vice versa without much modification.

I guess it's not also possible to modify the KD coupler either, as it relies on an actual side-to-side uncouple, rather than the rapido which goes up.

[ntrainlover]

Well for the cars I suggest taking the pin off of the truck and replacing the whole truck, because most of the time, the coupler is part of the truck in N scale. For the locomotive, I do not know what to do.
Hope this helps.
Any questions about what I said, Just PM me.
:)