I was reading the latest issue of GRM and I saw the review of the Accucraft #1 ga. coupler. They lament that it’s a little too big for 1/32. But as I’m looking at it I’m thinking, did they just come out with these? And why didn’t I know about these. It looks like they bought the dies from Kadee for the coupler box since it’s almost identical. The coupler shank is also just like Kadees. The difference is the look is so much better than Kadees and as for operation I like that it can be used with real coupler cut levers or just reach in underneath and bump the pin up and uncouple. They couple to Kadee 820s easily. So obviously I bought a set and mounted them to 2 different cars to test them…how they work with my 820s and how they work with each other. Well my completely unscientific test shows they operate well in both scenarios. I had a 23 car train (mostly 50 foot boxcars and centerflow hoppers with metal wheels) which goes around almost 3/4 of my basement loop (10’ dia curves). So far I haven’t seen any problem with them. I’m figuring I’ll probably replace all my Kadees with these couplers eventually. Since they play nice with Kadees I can transition slowly. As for size…since I do 1/29 and have scanned in a drawing of a real ‘E’ type coupler, when I lay this coupler over the 1/29 scale drawing it looks like it lines up perfectly. According to Caboose Hobbies they added this to thier catalog in July 2008…why haven’t I seen anyone talk about these? Has anyone else tried these? Did I discover a secret? Here’s a few pictures comparing them to Kadee 820s. I would think anyone with an indoor layout that uses 820s would want to use these since they look so much more beleiveable (my opinion). Here’s the top view…Kadee on the right
Right side view…Kadee on the bottom
Left side view…Kadee on the bottom
Front view…Kadee on the left
Bottom view…Kadee on the left
