Magnetic couplers in Z

[kevsmiththai]

One thing that has made modelling British prototypes in Z is the thorny issues of couplers. Because the majority of U.K rolling stock uses buffers and screw couplings and there is not a lot of room at the ends the obvious couplers don't work.

 

Marklin ones are huge and create an unrealsitic gap between the vehicles, MTL ones need a lot room for the coupler spring box and my trials with The Rokuhan rapido type were inconclusive.

 

I'd heard from Max down in South Wales that they were playing with magnetic ones so i decided to have a go myself.

 

I ordered a load of 2mm diameter Neodymium magnets and was instantly impressed wiith how powerful they were. noting the comments from the supplier about how brittle they are and the stern warnings not to ingest them.

 

The first set of vehicles i wanted to sort out were the British Rail MK II coaches in Intercity executive livery. These will run behind the Class 47s on the forthcoming Tapton Junction layout. Now the 47s run on Marklin BR103 chassis so the obvious plan was to make a translator vehicle as the first attempt with a Marklin coupler at one end and a magnetic at the other. The BG Brake/parcel  van was a common head end vehicle so I converted one of the 3d printed ones already in the same livery

 

The basic coupler was a simple piece of brass strip bent at 90% at the magnet end and with a hole drilled at the other to take a 14BA screw to pivot it off the underframe

 

 

Here you can see the two ends

 

 

The BG runs on Marklin freight trucks. Must put the same colour wheels in either end!

 

 

Already you can see how close the coaches are going to be

 

[kevsmiththai]

So the first test was to run the loco and BG around my test track. This has some evil Marklin set track reverse curves and the 47 selected was the jerky one to see how the coaching stock would behave. The BG ran around quite happily and  I added more MK IIs which had been fitted with magnetics at both ends and run on MTL 904 trucks. Things were going nicely until I got to coach four when derailments started to happen. Looking closer it turned out I was being a bit to greedy getting them coupled that close together as the ends were fouling so some longer brass trips cured that.

 

Note... You have to have the polarity of the magnets the opposite polarity at either end of the vehicle. If you try and couple up with the same polarity they wlil just push themselves apart

 

here is the Intercity liveried Class 86 AC electric merrilly pulling the Bg and Five coaches around Republic Steel with no uncouplings or derailments

 

 

To uncouple them you just need to lift one end vertically to break the magnetic attraction.

 

Emboldened by this the next rake to sort out was the converted Atlas Edition Pullmans that come with the Golden Arrow set. these have been fitted with MTL 904s.

 

 

Youll notice I have painted the brass strip red. the magnets set at this polarity are painted red and the other polarity (at the other end) black so when you assemble the train you do 'Red to Black'

 

Here are the first two of six Pullmans coupled to a 3D printed Southen railway unrebuilt 'Merchant Navy' class. The tender has been fitted with a short magnetic coupler but I found that as the tender was so light that the magnets picked it up off its wheels! Needless to say it is now having a shed load of metal glued into it.

 

The next rake of Mk IIs, in the classic Blue/grey intercity livery, under construction are behind.

 

So far so good

 

more details can be found on this first video

 

 

 

Four wheels freight stock will be next. probably the 27 ton iron ore tipplers as they ran as a block train

 

More to follow

 

kev