Minimum Gauge

[clive_t]

Very useful and informative article, Steve. I have been sufficiently motivated to actually purchasing some of these things from the website, so I will be referring back to this thread when they finally arrive.

Cheers,
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Clive

Portsmouth, UK

Visit the Scampington and Chipside Garden Railway at http://www.scampington-chipside.co.uk/ - Now with added Gn15!

See the works in progress at http://scgrbuild.blogspot.com/

[michael]

Thanks Steve I thing that I will give these a go in the not too distant Future.
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Regards Michael
If you believe you can make something, you can make it.

http://users.xplornet.com/~macton/index.html

[Rockley Bottom]

Steve

Thanks for the article on the couplers.

Looking at trying it out , one question that comes to mind, is are your couplers fixed rigid, or do you attach them with some side play, to keep them in line on curved track?

Ralph

[Gerry Bullock]

[Rockley Bottom]

Thanks Gerry, must give them a try. I may throw together a small board of track to give them a go

Ralph

[clive_t]

My DG Couplings stuff arrived on Saturday, so I had the chance that evening to make one up according to the instructions on this thread: 5 minutes from beginning to end! Easy-peasy!

Fortunately I had some soft iron wire left over from my experiments with 'sprat-n-winkle' couplings, so I used that to make the loop. Seems to work with a small permanent magnet, but I need to make another one to see how the latching works. Hopefully I'll get to do that tonight. But so far, so good...

Thanks again Steve for a great article.

Cheers
_________________
Clive

Portsmouth, UK

Visit the Scampington and Chipside Garden Railway at http://www.scampington-chipside.co.uk/ - Now with added Gn15!

See the works in progress at http://scgrbuild.blogspot.com/

[Steve Bennett]

[NeilMac]

Steve,

Thanks for sharing this. As a user of DG couplers who has managed to have more than a few failures whilst attempting soldering I will certainly be giving this method a try.

One question I have is why soft wire for the loops rather than the steel wire supplied in the kit (of which I have already ordered extra for handrails). Is it that you have tried the supplied wire and found it not to work, or was it just because the soft wire was easier to bend and yet still strong enough to do the job?
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Neil

Riverside Yard http://www.precisionlabels.com/shunt

[Gerry Bullock]

[clive_t]

Well as promised I made up a second one last night (sans iron wire loop) - it would have been about 3 minutes but for some experimentation with trying to get a better curve on the latch.

In the end I found that having inserted the latch and splayed the 'legs' to keep it in place, I was then able to use the shank of a small screwdriver as a former, bending the latch over it to get the desired smooth curve. Worked a treat guv!

I was then able to try the latching with the two couplings I had. It works fine with a permanent magnet; if anything it works too well. It always uncouples when pushing the wagon over the magnet, even if you don't want it to. When pulling, it will almost always remain coupled (presumably because of the tension on the wire loop holding it against the hook).

At the risk of stealing Steve's thunder (I would never knowingly do that, honest!), my own answer to Mr NeilMac's question about soft/hard iron for the loops: yes it's easier to form, but from my college days I seem to remember one of the lecturers rambling on about hysteresis characteristics of various materials, meaning how easy was it to magnetise and how easy is it to demagnetise. Soft iron is very easy to magnetise, and does not retain the magnetism. Therefore only a small magnet is needed to attract it, and it will not stay magnetised. Ideal for couplings!

That's my theory anyway, I confidently expect to be shot down by someone more knowledgeable!
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Clive

Portsmouth, UK

Visit the Scampington and Chipside Garden Railway at http://www.scampington-chipside.co.uk/ - Now with added Gn15!

See the works in progress at http://scgrbuild.blogspot.com/

[Steve Bennett]

[Gerry Bullock]

[Steve Bennett]

[NeilMac]

Last night I decided to try building a coupler using the steel wire as supplied in the coupler pack - as stated in my first post I had already ordered and extra pack of this wire to use for handrails. My couplers are 009/TT size.

I found that the stiff wire could be formed correctly. The trick seemed to be to create one single bend round the jig using finger pressure, which would then spring back to about half the bend, and then use fine square nosed pliers to force the bend back to 90 degrees. This process would then be repeated until all bends were a clean right angle - which is actually quicker to do than write about.

Fitting the loop to the etch was not to bad either - although a thought that I had after doing it was that it may have been even easier if done before bending the buffing plate so that the end part of the etch was still flat.

As for uncoupling - on a previous layout I had used the electromagnets from the same supplier as the couplers and these worked fine. For my current layout, as I need many more uncouplers so as not to limit operation, I am planning to try permanent magnets. What I hope to be able to do is have these hinged below the board such that the normal position is low enough that stock can run over them with uncoupling, but they can be easily raised by either twisting a rod or pulling a chord from the layout edge. Initial tests indicate that only small magnets are need to activate these couplers so this should hopefully not be too complex a thing to do.

Again, thanks for bringing this method to my attention - will save me considerable time getting couplers fitted to all my stock.
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Neil

Riverside Yard http://www.precisionlabels.com/shunt

[Steve Bennett]