Truck vs Body Mounted

[One of One-Sixty]

I guess you can call this the old age question.  Which is better, truck mounted or body mounted couplers. I thought truck mounted allowed for tight radius turns, while body allowed for closer coupling.

Is it possible to have the best of both worlds on rolling stock, especially 85' cars?

[Philip H]

My stuff is nearly all truck mounted, mostly because they come taht way and I'm too lazy to change them.  I'm running 14 inch radius curves, so it isn't yet an issue.

[wm3798]

I generally don't have a problem with truck mounted couplers, but my hopper fleet is gradually getting converted to 100% body mounts.  Since they tend to be a little lighter, I just find they're less of a problem when shoving cuts of cars uphill into a mine tipple.

My Atlas 55t fleet is also getting body mounts, which I do by clipping the Accumate coupler box off the truck, then gluing it to the frame with a dot of CA.  This allows me to close up the gap between cars, as well as get the benefits of body mounts.  Ironically, I had to do this because these cars are heavy!  I found that shoving a cut of 5 cars up a grade would have the car closest to the engine derail every time.  With the body mount, there's not a problem.

Lee

[Philip H]

I generally don't have a problem with truck mounted couplers, but my hopper fleet is gradually getting converted to 100% body mounts.  Since they tend to be a little lighter, I just find they're less of a problem when shoving cuts of cars uphill into a mine tipple.

My Atlas 55t fleet is also getting body mounts, which I do by clipping the Accumate coupler box off the truck, then gluing it to the frame with a dot of CA.  This allows me to close up the gap between cars, as well as get the benefits of body mounts.  Ironically, I had to do this because these cars are heavy!  I found that shoving a cut of 5 cars up a grade would have the car closest to the engine derail every time.  With the body mount, there's not a problem.

Lee

What ACC are you using, and how does it do with the Delrin coupler pockets?

[mcjaco]

^ CA can glue delrin.  I've got one pocket that's nice and gooey from too much CA. 

[Packer]

There's an addage that comes to mind for this question:

"When in doubt, body mount."

For the 85' foot cars, body mount would mean large radius unless you have a swinging coupler box. I have a few cars (although they are HO, something like this may be possible to rig for N) that have these and they really help.

[ednadolski]

I guess you can call this the old age question.  Which is better, truck mounted or body mounted couplers. I thought truck mounted allowed for tight radius turns, while body allowed for closer coupling.

Short answer is, "better" depends on what you want to do, and it becomes a matter of trade-offs.

All other things equal, truck mounts are better for very tight curves like 9 3/4" radius, esp. for longer rolling stock.  Tight curves have other issues like making coupling more difficult, and many consider them to contribute to a "toy like" appearance.  Truck mounts alone do not fully solve the tight-radius issues, and this had led to things like increased spacing between cars, oversize wheel flanges, and excessive carbody heights.

Body mounts are more prototypical, but have a real performance advantage whenever the cars are being pushed instead of pulled.  With pushing, truck mounts tend to skew (rotate) the truck and cause derailments.  This is not usually a problem in short trains, but with longer trains and uphill grades the pushing forces are greater, and eventually become large enough to cause problems.

[oakcreekco]

I've got 21 1/2" curves, so anything really works well for me.

Bluford Shops has hit a home run IMO, as far as coupler mounting on a LONG car goes. The ride height looks great, and a lash up of these cars has NO slinky at all. I've installed MTL 1036 trucks on my Blufords, and with their couplers, it's the best of both worlds IMO.

[bbussey]

Body-mounts also allow models to sit at the proper height over the rails without compromising the detail on the ends.

As long as the track radius is greater than 11", the long cars (85+ feet) will remain coupled.  Trying to couple two of them together on a curve however will be an issue.

I'm amazed this is even up for debate in the 21st century.  Motive power went to body-mounts at least 15 years ago - no one ever complains about C-630s and DL-109s and SD-90 MACs going around curves.  Brass models always had body-mounts.  I don't know why it has taken so long for the freight and passenger equipment to catch up.

[John]

I have found though that cars need to be properly weighted. I have some Deluxe coalporters that derail all the time when coupled to a bodymount loco ..

[wm3798]

What ACC are you using, and how does it do with the Delrin coupler pockets?

I use a dot of gel CA.  It won't wick into the draft gear like the runny stuff.  I've got some cars that have been done for 4 or 5 years, with no pop-offs.

Lee

[ednadolski]

I have found though that cars need to be properly weighted. I have some Deluxe coalporters that derail all the time when coupled to a bodymount loco ..

Sounds like maybe a geometry issue -- the heavier car/loco will always "win" 

[ednadolski]

I don't know why it has taken so long for the freight and passenger equipment to catch up.

Tooling & marketing investments, I suppose.

BTW Bryan, I really liked your NSR articles re: lowering freight cars and making body-mount couplers from K&S brass rectangle tubing.  Do you think that body-mount technique will work with the new McHenry couplers?   AFAIK they're supposed to have close dimensions to the Accumates.

http://www.nscalesupply.com/mch/MCH.html

At last, a way to get rid of the pogo effect (hopefully!) 

Ed

[Nato]

  I have a mixed bag of cars,some factory truck mounts,some body mounts, and my favorites some Atlas cement hoppers with Z scale body mounts which fit right on the cars mounting pad with no shim needed to adjust for height. My preferrence would be body mount for everything,even passenger cars, but given my vast fleet I don't think everything will get changed over any time soon. No I'am not even going to try and correct ride height eventhough I know it would look better.                                                          Nate Goodman (Nato).

[bbussey]

... BTW Bryan, I really liked your NSR articles re: lowering freight cars and making body-mount couplers from K&S brass rectangle tubing.  Do you think that body-mount technique will work with the new McHenry couplers?   AFAIK they're supposed to have close dimensions to the Accumates...

Ed, the technique works with every knuckle coupler except MTL.  Also - someone improved my design, but I don't remember who did and where I saw it.  If I remember correctly they used styrene instead of aluminum tubing, which is more than strong enough with the metal screw holding everything in place and much easier to cut to length.