Uncoupler/flashlight

[sarge]

Micromark have taken the inexpensive pocket torch er flashlight, put a rubber boot and a clear plastic moulding on it to make an uncoupling wand that lights up between the cars. The operators here immediately pointed to the catalogue entry and wanted to give them a try, some of us being older with dimmer eyesight perhaps.

Anyway, this is the critter. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a direct link other than to their general website so a couple screenshots calling it fair-use in a review.





These things are genius. The LED is punchy and projects down the clear shaft to the tip very nicely. They advertise as useful in HO and O out of the packet and in N with minor modification.

I'm sure the tip is lovely in HO use, their main market no doubt, but in O we felt the shaft was short reaching between house-cars, especially high-cube cars and the blade width too narrow to reliably flip the knuckles apart. Since the boot that holds the shaft to the lens slips off, its a matter of making an improved shaft better suited to O. We've already been using a wider and simpler shape for our non-illuminated uncoupling wands and the result is popular for reliability and ease.



Using brass tube, a washer soldered on top, and acrylic rod from a plastics retailer on Amazon, we replicated our tip on new-made shafts and the comparison is here, theirs the one-piece clear one and ours the brass tube and clear rod version.



Ours is also a bit longer, especially useful on high-cube house-cars.


Here you see how the assemblies are made and the final form. The tip is formed with sanding sticks and a final smoothing with wire wool and dipped in Trucolor clear gloss. Purposely the tip is not polished so the light "blooms" better. Also, you'll notice four holes in the flange where it meets the tube to allow some light to escape at the top of the shaft to illuminate between cars up by the roof. It's a nice luxury to keep from banging the details at twice the height of HO, but perhaps not really required.



Here is the effect once lit.


During the last ops session I had three prototypes out for people to compare with our non-illuminated uncoupling wands. They were well enough received that I made enough to replace our non-illuminated ones completely. Most of the time the layout lighting gives good visibility between cars and folks use these as they did our old ones, but now, where you might find yourself in the odd place where that isn't the case, "click"!

[up148]

Nice job! Some of the MM is okay and a lot not so much. But, the ideas are great.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Nice adaption to O scale......and perhaps useful for those night Ops sessions, too!

[healey36]

The additional lighting is handy, but developing a knack for actually separating the couplers with a “blade” took me a while. For whatever reason, these plastic/lucite versions seem to work better than the first-gen brass version for me.

[sarge]

The additional lighting is handy, but developing a knack for actually separating the couplers with a “blade” took me a while. For whatever reason, these plastic/lucite versions seem to work better than the first-gen brass version for me.

Ah yes, you bring up the entire evolution of the Kadee uncoupling wand here, an important and extremely understated tool for operations.



From left to right, we see the old Micromark uncoupler which we started with. They were robust and worked adequately but not really consistently smooth in use.

Our Mk1 wand took the principle and added a tapered flank with the leading edges broken, the next design shown. They were an improvement but they required a deft touch. I'm afraid "deft" was asking a lot, so the Mk2 design added the ears you see in the next one to artificially set the depth rather than expect folks to do it by feel. Still, they required a skill to use. All the old Mk1 were converted over except for one which was set aside to archive.

The one on the far right is our Mk3, the current non-illuminated design. That one really hit the optimal shape and the tips being made of poly finally eliminated the tendency to scrape and tangle with the coupler head features. The result is very transparent to use. They work nicely without any thought, so really can't ask for a more user-friendly design.

Once I had made enough of the Mk3, all the Mk2 were scrapped for the tubing after again setting one aside to archive. Sounds a bit like an engineering neurosis to do so but I was able to dig the archived ones out to show you here! GRIN!

The illuminated ones (Mk4) use the same tip design though in lucite rather than poly. Currently, they are distributed replacing the Mk3s, but it's still early enough in the transition such that the latter are available until final judgement is passed upon the new versions by all the operators.

It sounds like a lot of faff over something seriously mundane, but they are far more important a tool in this game than one would initially consider.