Coupler boxes

I got in contact with the guy who had designed the Berwick coupler boxes mentioned above and on sale at Shapeways. I asked him if he thought those boxes would fit my PS-4427 hoppers. He said no, but kindly (and totally surprising for me offered to design some that would). I guess he could use some for himself, and not did this out of kindness only. But who knows? Anyway, I am very grateful. We exchanged some proto and model photos, along with some model measurements, and he came up with this beautiful design:

The box is not specifically designed for the Protocraft Clouser coupler, since he wanted a more generic design. But I think I'll be able to come up with some way of mounting such a coupler in the box.

I have bought a six-pack of the coupler boxes and they arrived a few days ago, and in IRL they look like this:

Very good, don't you think?

The boxes are easily attached to the cars, using the original mounting screws and holes. They only need to be countersunk for the screws to not later interfere with the coupler shank. Here is one of the boxes test fitted on one of the cars.

Assembling couplers

The type "E" couplers i ordered from Protocraft arrived a few days ago, and today I assembled them. As advertised, it took some filing and drilling to get the parts ready for assembly, but it was a fairly straightforward process given the detailed instructions that Norm at Protocraft sent along. So I now have one set of couplers for each of the hoppers, and one set for the engine.

Here is what (six of them) looked before assembly. Three parts each - body and shank, knuckle and lift pin.

Actually, there was a fourth part also. A small spike acting as the knuckle hinge, referred to as the "escutcheon", a word I never heard of before,

And here are the first two I assembled. The hinge spike will later be trimmed to length.

Since I do not yet have any coupler boxes I am unable to install them and cannot make any live tests. But they seem to couple and uncouple as they should when doing a simple test by hand.