Brick Model Railroader announce working knuckle couplers

[Matt Dawson]

Brick Model Railroader (BMR for short) have announced they are going to produce Kadee couplers for LEGO trains.

Whilst Bricktracks had been working on a coupler prototype that used a technic peg mounting (making it suitable for both the technic plate and 9V era buffer beam mounting) this has since been abandoned owing to some technical hitches (this does get mentioned in the video). 

The couplers will be coming pre-assembled in twin packs (i.e. enough for one loco/wagon/car/coach or 2 adapter vehicles) and are available in 2 different types with 2 coupler mounting types, allowing both bogie mounted (with the tiled versions) and body mounted (with the 'studded' versions). BMR has stated they will offer conversion instructions for their releases and although no prices are mentioned, the release date sounds to be around October this year

Someone has previously used Kadee kits with LEGO trains but this can be fiddly to get the knuckles aligned across all rolling stock; this is an "off the shelf" solution, where the trip pin reaches one plate/tile above the rail height and will possibly allow remote uncoupling!

Personally I can't wait for their release (I dread to think of the cost of even partially converting my fleet!), and within my train LUG (LNUR) there has been suggestions of moving some of our coaching stock to these couplers for exhibition running, as it will save using the neodynium magnets. For those not wishing to convert, others doing so may mean the old 9V style magnets become easier to obtain.

Edited June 28, 2020 by Matt Dawson
added thread link

[JWBDolphins]

This is really interesting.  I've replaced a bunch of HO gauge Tyco plastic horn couplers with Kadee couplers over the years with great success.  I had thought about trying O gauge Kadees for LEGO and read all the threads on this I could find (most mentioned above) but just hadn't gotten around to it yet.  I am very interested to see what they come up with.