unklian
Western Thunderer
I have been meaning to do this for a while. After fiddling with various tools and bits of bent wire, trying to couple up G3 three link couplings. You would have thought it would be easy at such a big scale .
So using this example from the museum at Wallingford, I made a proper coupling pole with a 'pigtail' hook. It's a fair bit over length because I don't have 1:22 scale hands, but the hook is only a bit oversize. I didn't make the hook quite as sharp as the prototype for obvious reasons too. Trails so far are promising although it only seems to work well from the side, as per prototype, this might prove awkward in some model situations. The knack is in twisting the pole to engage and disengage the hook from the end loop of the coupling chain. The hook is piano wire for strength, the ferrule is brass and the pole is a bamboo food skewer. And yes I did realise ( eventually ) that I made the other hook opposite handed dooh .....
So using this example from the museum at Wallingford, I made a proper coupling pole with a 'pigtail' hook. It's a fair bit over length because I don't have 1:22 scale hands, but the hook is only a bit oversize. I didn't make the hook quite as sharp as the prototype for obvious reasons too. Trails so far are promising although it only seems to work well from the side, as per prototype, this might prove awkward in some model situations. The knack is in twisting the pole to engage and disengage the hook from the end loop of the coupling chain. The hook is piano wire for strength, the ferrule is brass and the pole is a bamboo food skewer. And yes I did realise ( eventually ) that I made the other hook opposite handed dooh .....