N Scale Adventures: Using rare earth magnets for uncoupling

Almost all of my rolling stock and engines have MT couplers. Obviously, this is because I want to be able to uncouple without touching the trains. However, the uncoupling magnets produced by Micro Trains are both expensive and, in the case of the above the track model, quite unsightly.

So, I started to look for cheap alternatives. In the medium sized layout I have, I tried cheap magnets from Home Depot. These were small block magnets. I put two of them separated by insulating material (Plexiglas strips in this case) and placed them under the track with each magnet under one rail.

This worked ok, but not 100% reliably because the magnets weren’t strong enough. For the small layout, I really needed the uncouplers to function reliably. So, I started searching for alternatives. I found out that most people use rare earth magnets. Most commonly I’ve seen four magnets placed on some sort of square arrangement, like shown on this website. That seemed like a lot of work, so I wanted to try it with block magnets. So, I ordered a box of block magnets that are 1" long and 0.25" wide.

When you put two of these next to each other, they are just ever so slightly wider than the distance between the rails. Test runs looked promising so I went ahead and installed a set on one of the industry spurs I have. I marked the outside of the magnets and then using an exacto knife I cut the foam bed out. I dropped the magnets in there and did one more test run.