Page 3 - Blog

Tis the Season for kindness, friendship, fellowship and family! It is our hope and prayers that your spirit will be lifted this Christmas season as well as your business.

We are so very thankful for our awesome dealers, distributors, retailer customers and friends. Your business and enthusiasm for model railroading is what keeps us going. We are extremely blessed for your patronage and the opportunity to continue to supply you with great products manufactured here in the USA. As we enter December, it is our hope that this month, “things” begin to settle down and we can all have faith that small businesses will again blossom and regain momentum.

Kadee is developing new items to help expand our presence and serve the model railroad enthusiast along with all the fantastic products we have created over the past 75 years!

When you need the BEST and want an All American made product, turn to Kadee Quality Products. It is our honor to help make model railroading a happy hobby. Kadee’s website

Yes, we are releasing a Christmas car this year; it was just behind schedule. Limited quantity.

Upcoming shows we will be attending.

We will be at Trainfest this year on November 12th & 13th at the Wisconsin State Fair Park in Milwaukee, WI. We also will be attending our local railroad show. Rogue Valley Railroad Show November 26th & 27th at the Jackson County Expo Central Point, OR.

We look forward to being back at both of these great shows after they were postponed due to COVID restrictions last year. It feels good getting out there, socializing, and enjoying life again. If you have not had the chance to talk to us in person, we invite everyone to visit us in our booth at either show. Come check out what you have missed over the last couple of years. If you have not had the chance to talk to us in person. I will attend booth shows to answer your product and coupler conversion questions. We will be giving a Product Overview, Questions and Answers presentation in our booth at Trainfest

COUPLERS, and The People Who Make Them….

Kadee Quality Products Company has been the "De-facto Standard" for Model Railroad couplers since the early '70s. It has expanded its line of fully functioning Knuckle couplers over the last 40 years. From HOn3 to G scale for Reliability and Functionality.

The prevalent Whisker® version in “Scale” and Standard head HO gauge has overtaken the standard shank centering system for their "ease of use," and the same dependability and reliability modelers have come to expect from Kadee®. Our #148 Centerset Whisker® coupler now outsells "Ole Reliable” NO.5® and #158 “Scale” Head Whisker® coupler outsells its predecessor #58.

Please Note that ALL these couplers will work together provided you have them at the proper height, which you can check with a coupler height gauge, either a #206 or #205.

To dispel any rumors, Kadee is not discontinuing our #148 coupler or any other couplers.

Bulk packs of the #148's can be found on our website as #148-25 (25 pairs)

I realize it has been only a couple of weeks since our August release, but we need to get back on schedule. So don’t forget about our August 2022 Patriotic Car release.

We have been getting a lot of positive feedback on this design, with the Statue of Liberty and the Constitution of the United States on the side of the car.

I feel the artwork represents the strong American spirit that we all share in one way or another that everyone should be able to relate to, if you leave politics aside.

I was at the 2022 National Garden Railway Conference in Denver last month assisting the attendees with the Large Scale Kadee® product questions. I had a lot of inquiries about our large scale metal wheels and trucks and some I didn’t know the answer to. I can admit this, so when I got back, I looked up the technical info I was ask about and updated our large scale wheel product information on our website. Please check out the large scale wheel product pages #950, #951, #960, & #961 as we have new technical info on the pages.

I keep getting e-mail questions on how may large scale wheels are in the factory packaging even though we have a clear product description on our webpage. We discovered what has been causing the confusion with the 950, #951, #960, & #961 quantities. There had been some resellers opening the Kadee® factory packaging and removing our protective packaging thus changing the quantity & reselling the #950, #951, #960, & #961 as 4 Axle sets instead of the factory 2 Axles sets.

I am thinking this month we are going to go over drilling and tapping holes. This may be a subject that intimidates some of you out there. Others it may seem like second nature and wonder why I would go over such a subject. Everyone has to to start somewhere in the hobby and people have all different skill levels. For those who are new to the hobby and may not have grown up around tools, working on cars or what not, you may not even know what drilling and tapping holes is referring too it is OK.

I keep getting people asking questions about what glue to use; wanting to glue gearboxes on to cars instead of drilling and taping screw holes to attach the coupler gearbox or replacing trucks. I even have people asking questions about using and were to get self taping screws for mounting couplers and trucks because they don’t want to tap a screw hole. Lets first just say gluing gearboxes is not recommended and should be avoided. A glued on gearbox is permanent and if your coupler height is even

I have gotten many questions at shows & by e-mail regarding what is the difference between our two styles of Large scale couplers; the AAR Type “E” coupler and our original style of coupler that are available in (O-scale 1:48, #1-scale 1:32 & G-Scale 1:22.5). Yes, both designed are based on the common Type E coupler. Our original coupler style has an exposed knuckle spring with minimal details; our AAR Type “E” coupler has a much more prototypal appearance & hidden knuckle spring. Know that it is large scale season it is time to go over the subject and the features that make the couplers different.

Let's just start out with the obvious the AAR Type “E” coupler has a much more prototypal appearance then our original style of coupler. The AAR Type “E” coupler contour with visible Kadee® casting marks to better replicate the prototype coupler. One other big feature if it hasn’t jumped out at you yet is where is the Knuckle spring? Yes, that is right the AAR Type “E” couplers have a hidden

I am going to go over coupler mounting height again and again, until I stop seeing or hearing about peoples conversion video’s posted on the internet that show people mounting couplers at the incorrect coupler mounting height on “how to videos”. Couplers barely hooked together and then bending the trip pin is not acceptable; even if the coupler is off 20 to 30 thousands checked with a coupler height gauge is not “good enough” for trouble free operation. If you don’t want your cars coming apart when you are running them then you need to take care you have the coupler mounting height correct. “Scale” couplers make this even more critical because the coupler pulling face is smaller.

Example: When you go over that transition on your layout pulling your favorite cars the couplers knuckles will raise and lower keeping the cars connected if you have set the mounting height of the couplers at the centerline, this gives the most available coupler movement without the couplers slipping apart. If

Wholesale customers: We’ve made some big changes that will affect the way you place orders with Kadee going forward.

Firstly, ALL wholesale orders for Retail Products must be placed directly through the Kadee.com website to receive your discount. We are no longer able to accept faxed or e-mailed orders. Kadee.com features a live inventory and only the inventory available is purchasable. We cannot accept back-orders at this time.

Secondly, we have added a convenient website feature for our wholesale customers called FAST ORDER. FAST ORDER allows you to conveniently add products to your cart. This can be found under the MY ACCOUNT drop down next to the shopping cart icon on the top-right of our website. You can either upload a .csv with SKU/Qty or enter SKUs and quantities manually. You must be logged in to use this feature.

FAST ORDER allows you to add products to your cart by uploading a .csv file (sample .csv file available on FAST ORDER page). You must use the Kadee® SKU number (which