Keen System

[Jim de Griz]

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with the Keen System of close coupling and sprung end plates?

Long story short, I have a rake of old Hornby LMS Coaches I want to upgrade along the lines of my Gresley GNR conversions.

To my eye, one of the major issue with these coaches is the excessive spacing between the carriages, compounded by the very short corridor connectors. The Keen System looks easier enough to fit and seems like it should sort my problem out in one go. I suppose the big question I have is, do they live up to their claim of negotiating R2 curves?

Jim de Griz

[Hatfield Shed]

Seen the Keen product on demonstration at a couple of exhibitions, operated very fast on a circut with set track curves, and it was doing the job as advertised.

My own experience with the camming mechanisms in RTR OO products that work on the same principle, is that these are reliable in holding the gangway faceplates in contact on straight or very nearly so track, and spacing off the faceplates proportional to curve radius, enabling the coaches to negotiate whatever minimum radius they will go around separately. I haven't gone to the trouble of adding sprung faceplates, because the trains are seen on straight track and extremely gentle curves, so there 's no 'spacing off'.

There are caveats however with the RTR system, and I should think the same applies to the Keen product. Perhaps some folk can tip the RTR coaches out of the boxes, couple up using a 'rigid link' coupler and it works perfectly immediately. Not for me, the mechanisms needed 'exercising' and a little graphite lubrication in the mechanisms and on the contacting faceplates, small adjustment to the lengths of the couplers; and if the buffers are sprung, or rigid and fully extended, these typically need to be altered to the retracted position so the buffer faces are well behind the gangway faceplate.

It's worth it as far as I am concerned. Bonus! There's a good unanticipated effect: the loco has the full load of the train on starting, the whole train moves realistically as a piece, none of the taking up the coaches one at a time. This produces a half turn or two of wheelslip quite naturally, perhaps one in three starts.

[Jim de Griz]

Thank you for the advice Hatfield. I’m quite looking forward to give this a go, hadn’t thought about the benefit of getting rid of the ‘loose coupling effect.

If the experiment with the LMS coaches is successful I might look at retrofitting then to my other racks.

That will likely be tricker as moat of them are a mixture of Hornby, Triang and Isinglass Kits so i imagine I’ll need to spend sometime experimenting with them.

Very long tern I have a trio of Ratio kits that might run alot better if the forces were not transmitted through the bogies. Goodness knows if there would be room for the mechanism though.

Jim de Griz

[Jim de Griz]

I ended up trailing two systems, Keen and Porterhouse's Magnetic Couplings.

Have to say, I'm impressed with both.

Fitting the Keen System to my old Hornby LMS coaches was very simple, it worked pretty much out of the box with only a few passes of a file to smooth the surfaces. (and I'm not even sure that was necessary)

I also used their replacement corridor connections and floating end plates. The result is that when the coaches are on the straight there is no visible gap between the coaches, yet they still run round my 2nd radius curves with ease.

Certainly I'll be fitting this system to any other Hornby coaches of a similar type.

Jim de Griz

[Jim de Griz]

Not all my coaches are Hornby though.

In the middle rake (this is my best before photo) are two Isinglass Kits and two scratchbuilds on Triang underframes, plus two Hornby coaches running on Isinglass bogies. The gaps between them was excessive, and now it isn't.

No floating plate or equivalent yet, but the gap is far more reasonable, far less noticable.

Porterhouse's is a clever system, the magnets are on a hinge and have a little 'up/down' flexibility as well. Easy enough to fit, remove the old coupling and replace with super glue. A little experimentation is naturally needed (thus the blue tac!) but so far I've had no issues running them through points and second radius curves.

Jim de Griz

[Hatfield Shed]

Good to read. I might get around to some of my old kit gangwayed coaches which currently have fixed wire links; probably going for the floating endplates to eliminate the small gaps (they are set up for 36" minimum radius).