Thoughts on Couplers.. Body Mount vs Truck Mount -- MTL vs TSC/NPossible.

[Spades]

Began N Scale in the 1970's and  converted everything to Kadee/MT.  It was all body mounted.  Maybe it was a little more work, but I would say body mounts are the way to go. The manufacturers seem now to have embraced the body mount.

[GaryHinshaw]

I would add that consistency is very important.  We now have a plethora of coupler brands: e.g. MTL, MTL clone, Accumate, McHenry, Scale Trains, Kato, Aurora, Bachmann, (VRK?), others?, and they don't interoperate as nicely as you might wish.  (And a lot of them are ugly.)  This has been one of my biggest frustrations with N scale in recent years, but I have been holding off on converting to a single brand until the N-Possible situation was clearer.

I have now been fortunate enough to beta test a batch of N-Possibles and I am convinced that I will be converting my large fleet en masse as soon as Andrew can deliver.  They kiss-couple beautifully, they stay coupled under a variety of stressing conditions (changing tension and compression) even if they have a small (~10-20%) height mismatch, and  their centring force is well calibrated so they couple easily, and handle situations like crossovers nicely, but they don't splay too much in shoving moves.   They also look fantastic - once you get used to the size difference, you can never look at a stock coupler the same way.  I consider them to be the best thing to (just about) hit N scale since the Kato mechanism.

I'm not able to predict a release date, but I do know that Andrew is fully committed and that - for me - they will be worth the wait.

[Jbub]

I would add that consistency is very important.  We now have a plethora of coupler brands: e.g. MTL, MTL clone, Accumate, McHenry, Scale Trains, Kato, Aurora, Bachmann, (VRK?), others?, and they don't interoperate as nicely as you might wish.  (And a lot of them are ugly.)  This has been one of my biggest frustrations with N scale in recent years, but I have been holding off on converting to a single brand until the N-Possible situation was clearer.

I have now been fortunate enough to beta test a batch of N-Possibles and I am convinced that I will be converting my large fleet en masse as soon as Andrew can deliver.  They kiss-couple beautifully, they stay coupled under a variety of stressing conditions (changing tension and compression) even if they have a small (~10-20%) height mismatch, and  their centring force is well calibrated so they couple easily, and handle situations like crossovers nicely, but they don't splay too much in shoving moves.   They also look fantastic - once you get used to the size difference, you can never look at a stock coupler the same way. I consider them to be the best thing to (just about) hit N scale since the Kato mechanism.

I'm not able to predict a release date, but I do know that Andrew is fully committed and that - for me - they will be worth the wait.

Yes, the MTL clone Scaletrains is using on the GP30 looks MASSIVE. I can only imagine what the OG scaletrains coupler would have looked like on it.

[turbowhiz]

But I'm concerned if the size of the TSC/Npossible is going to hinder operators on the layout with switching.

I'm curious if there is anything that Npossible would improve upon over standard Micro-Trains couplers related to switching operations other than no slinky.

~Ian

N-Possible was born of making TSC’s functional for operations. It just turned out my solution worked so well I couldn’t leave it there.

My show booth setup is a switching layout (a bunch of unitrack arranged as such more accurately), so that should indicate that they aren’t just a pretty face, but truly meant for that form of operation.

Advantages for switching ops include:

No slinky: Low speed switching scenarios is where its most prevalent and annoying for sure!

Low Slack: Another major operating advantage is no monstrous slack, especially on long car cuts. If you’re trying to work the end of a cut of cars at low tie crawling speed, the amount of time it takes to take the slack in and out of each joint on a 20 car cut is significant.  A MTL joint is a scale foot and a half of slack, per joint… ~4.5mm. When you change directions on your 20 car cut, you need to move 90mm/3.5 inches at the head end before the last car moves. A sloppy N-Possible joint is ~.7mm; That is in two retrofit cars with small diameter posts, 4.4 scale inches per joint. The same 20 car cut; you need to move ½ inch on the power… And odds are a lot of joints are tighter than .7 mm, so it’s even less.  That’s a 6.5x+ difference, and it really adds up with longer cuts of cars.

Couplers Stay aligned under buff: Reverse movements will be more reliable. It’s akin to the difference between body and truck mount in terms of improvement, it’s that dramatic. You can also improve truck mount reverse movement reliability just by swapping them to N-Possible couplers for the same reason, buff alignment, although they’re still not going to perform as well as body mounts.

More reliable draft-buff-draft: Body mount MTL’s are unreliable in the draft buff draft scenario, i.e. forward-reverse-forward movements where they will uncouple on corners and turnout S bends. Nothing more annoying than your train breaking up where you don’t want it to.

Uncoupling: You can uncouple the cars with effectively no car movement. Something impossible to perform due to the head design of MTL couplers; They are so much more satisfying to operate with in this regard.

Disadvantages:

If you’re trying to automatically couple of corners, you have less gathering distance to work with, so overscale couplers will still couple where scale couplers won’t. Truck mounting can almost entirely mitigate this, but of course there are significant downsides to that as already discussed. You can easily convert MTL truck mounts to N-Possible though if that better suits your needs.

Uncoupling:

I’ll call out that uncoupling technique is different. Since the head is smaller, more dexterity could be needed to get them uncoupled. I don’t find a significant difference, random showgoers reliably and successfully get them uncoupled easily on the first try when they’re coached on different technique, but the target is smaller. You do need different tools and techniques from what you’re used to with MTL couplers, so there is an adjustment. The tradeoff is they are fundamentally easier to get apart, but since the working area is smaller, so you need to be more precise, or work in new ways. The net-net I’d say is they’re not better or worse on balance, just different.

I would add that consistency is very important.  We now have a plethora of coupler brands: e.g. MTL, MTL clone, Accumate, McHenry, Scale Trains, Kato, Aurora, Bachmann, (VRK?), others?, and they don't interoperate as nicely as you might wish.  (And a lot of them are ugly.)  This has been one of my biggest frustrations with N scale in recent years, but I have been holding off on converting to a single brand until the N-Possible situation was clearer.

Gary brings up an excellent point here. The plethora of compatible examples abound, but none of them improve on the original MTL, or at least not with significant drawbacks in other aspects. And the mixture ends up being a disaster. If you’re serious about operations, coupler standardization is a must.

If you want the best operating coupler, in my biased opinion there is no contest. It just so happens it’s also the best-looking coupler.

[TinyTurner]

I spent quite a bit in order to learn how to convert MT couplers and put springs on the axles to anti-slinky, but have not yet committed to mass installation.
Musing truck vs body mount, I will need it in front of me to see what works, there are plenty to choose from.
I would like to know if I should hold off conversion until release?
I'm interested in Npossible for operations, but I have to wonder is they will be a sooner or later release? 
Cost is a consideration too, any guesses as to how that would compare?
Is there a spec sheet available?

Getting them in European stores would be a great help.

[learmoia]

I'm currently pushing forward on conversion to MTL body mount couplers, while my coupler supplies last or until the Npossible is released. 

The thought being with most of the fleet converted, changing from body mounted MTL to Npossilbe is a matter of a simple coupler swap.

The exception being covered hoppers, tank cars and some flat cars where I need to design a 3d printed coupler mounts, and I'd want to determine which coupler I design for.

But thats with a box full of MTL body mounts sitting at my disposal.. 

~Ian

[learmoia]

Well with Body Mount MTL Couplers, I can shove around 50 cars (Lengths 35' through 85') through staging....

 
Skip to about 1hr 36m