Exact Rail N scale hopper cars

[Barry Ten]

A few months ago I ordered a trio of nice-looking Exact Rail covered hoppers from ebay. The detail on them is exquisite, and they come equipped with magnetic uncouplers of the MTL genre. However only yesterday did I actually put one of them on the layout, and as it happened the first thing I did was push it over one of my MTL under-track undercoupling magnets. Whoah! The car itself demonstrated a massive attraction to the uncoupler, suggesting that the internal weight, or even part of the main body, is cast in a magnetic alloy! This is an absolute no-no - there's no point putting magnetic uncouplers on the car if the car itself is going to glue itself over every magnet it passes over! When replacing Rapido couplings on older models, I'm quite used to breaking into the model and substituting a non-magnetic weight. Unfortunately the design of these hoppers looks to be such that no easy disassembly is possible - it's covered in fine detail, with etched roof grills and so on, and I can't seen an obvious way in that won't involve breaking something. And in any case I suspect part of the model itself may be cast in metal.

 

Fortunately one of my main lines doesn't have any magnets under it, so I can run the car in a through-train of similar hoppers. But there'd be no possibility of doing any switching with this one. A distinct lack of joined-up thinking, I'm afraid.

[Nile]

It gets worse,Al.Their new models come with metal wheels that find magnets very attractive.Doh!