Kadees for the Consolidation

Tender

I wanted a Kadee coupler for the tender, and looked for a simple way. I only go body mounts, especially on a locomotive. (on such a short piece of rolling stock, it's silly to go truck mount, a body mount will still work on sharp curves, and the cutout in the back of the tender body looks silly).

Below is what the stock setup looks like with the coupler removed. See the long tang for the coupler:

First, unscrew the rear truck, and remove the rear axle, BUT note the orientation, which side the axle insulator is on.

The first thing to do is cut off the coupler truck mount "tang". I cut it flush for 2 reasons, appearance, and to have maximum clearance between the coupler gear box and the truck.

Now remove the tang, I cut with a special plastic cutting carbide wheel and finish with a drum sanding wheel on a Dremel tool.

Coming in from the end, cut the coupler tang off the bolster flush, finish with the drum

By taking off the wheelset (mind you remember the orientation of the wheels in the truck, one side is insulated and one is not) you have plenty of room to get the dremel in place for a nice square cut.

Below, you can see the bolster after finishing with the drum sander.

Now to make room for the coupler box. The opening is too high and not wide enough. You need to remove just a bit of material from the 2 ribs inside:

Next I looked for a simple way to make a base for the coupler draft gear and without relying on glue. I found that 1/4" x 1/4" styrene gave the perfect height. I put in a couple of styrene scraps to hold them in place. Make sure your 2 "shims" are pressed down firmly in place. Notice the 2 small notches in the face of the tender sill to accomodate the Kadee #911 (old #831 style) gear box.

I mounted the gearbox with a single #6 screw, the head fits inside the shell, but use a flathead so you can countersink it, because the screw is under the stack of flat metal weights.

As you see in the picture below, the coupler lines up pretty well for just a little effort. You can use shims under the coupler to fine tune the height, the picture above shows one small black shim under the "tail" of the gear box.

Locomotive pilot coupler:

I found an easy way to add a front coupler.

There's a mount there already, ,just remove the mount, and file it open JUST enough to take the shank of the Kadee coupler (#904).

Once you have this fitting, you need to get slightly longer screws, and put a shim against the pilot. Trim the end of the coupler shank to just protrude and then drill a hole through the mount and the coupler to hold the coupler in place.