I am looking to see if anyone know where to obtain those Rubber/Metal Striker Plate Diaphrams for passenger cars. Any leads would be appreciated. NONE were at the Strasburg O scale train show this past Saturday. Thanks in advance
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Maybe they all turned to goo? Even my recent K-Line rubber diaphragms are sticky and lumpy. Try paper, like All Nation?
Scale City Designs?
I haven't tried them yet (been busy), but the ones from Scale City Designs show some promise. I did see photos of some installed on a couple of heavyweights and they looked pretty good.
MHP's show up on E-Bay periodically and I've seen them at the Chicago meet on estate liquidations. Scale City is the most complete kit that's available new.
Rubber diaphragms with aluminum striker plates were formerly sold under the MHP brand in O and HO. When new they are quite flexible and had tabs on their striker plates that interlock with one another. They can be spotted by having rounded corners. In my experience they worked well on curves above 60" radius and had the advantage of staying in close contact with one another. On sharp curves and through tight crossovers interlocked diaphragms may cause derailments do to the lateral forces on the ends of scale length passenger cars. I once had HP diaphragms on some older passenger cars but haven't seen them sold for many years. Precision Scale sold rubber diaphragms with brass striker plates. Some of their heavyweight brass Pullmans came with these in the box. The ones I have can be spotted by their triangular tops. IMO they are too stiff to be considered "operational".
Folded paper diaphragms (with square corners) have been offered over the years by quite a few companies, including Walthers. Today Scale City Designs sells and improved version of this style diaphragm with added detail such as damper rods. The folded paper diaphragms I've seen have black plastic striker plates that do not interlock with one another. Around curves and through crossovers they slide by one another and do not have the derailment issues that sometimes occur with interlocked rubber ones. One disadvantage I've experienced is that over time they lose some of their "flex" - and therefore no longer make full contact with each other.