I attended the 2025 Great Lakes Large Scale Train Expo at the Metroplex Expo Center in Girard, OH, a few weeks ago. It was a great venue and a nice, family-oriented show that got the kids involved in the hobby. I was able to discuss many new large-scale products that we’ve introduced over the last few years, which many customers were previously unaware of, as well as answer numerous questions about coupler conversions. There was a wide variety of new and used merchandise for sale, along with clinics and modeling contests. They even had a live steam train ride set up in the parking lot. If you’re in the area, even if you have to travel a bit, I recommend attending the show; it’s sure to be fun for the entire family.

We will also be attending the 40th National Garden Railway Convention in Sacramento, CA, at the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center, June 18-22. Kadee® will have a booth on Friday and Saturday in the Vendor Hall. Visit our booth and ask us about our new large-scale products; we’ll be happy to answer your questions about coupler conversion and our products.

One of the constant questions I receive from new modelers entering large-scale modeling is the coupler question about trying to get multiple brands of locomotives and rolling stock to operate together. Modelers are frustrated with the manufacturer’s proprietary knuckle couplers, coupler heights, and hook-and-loop couplers. They tell me they want to run their trains and not have to deal with all the other stuff, and I get that. A few people had even thought we could provide all the couplers for all the large-scale manufacturers, and contact us to get an adaptor coupler to get their different brand cars to work together. I have to explain to them how every large-scale manufacturer creates its own proprietary equipment that doesn’t like to play nicely with other brands, and that’s where Kadee® couplers come in. We make different brands of cars play nice with each other. Whether you want to convert every car on your layout to Kadee® so they can run in any order with all the product functions that Kadee® couplers bring to your cars, or make a couple transition cars with a Kadee® on one end and the large-scale proprietary OEM coupler on the other, so that the two car brands can operate together.

We still occasionally encounter modelers who want to reinvent the wheel by cutting off the Kadee® coupler trip pin and then mounting the Kadee® couplers at an incorrect height that matches their large-scale proprietary OEM knuckle couplers. They believe it will be easier to force two brands of knuckle couplers that were never designed to operate together, than to make a transition car and mount the Kadee® couplers at the proper coupler height using the coupler height gauge (G-scale #880 or #980), (#1-Scale #829 or #1929). We don’t recommend forcing two different brands of large-scale knuckle couplers to operate together.