Upgrading the Kato Glacier Express

The Kato Glacier Express (Kato No. 10-1145 and 10-1146) is a great set, but there is one glaring problem:

Passengers traveling from one carriage to another must long jump from carriage to carriage. Not good. For such a beautiful set, it seems a shame to put such gigantic gaps between the carriages; apparently this was done so that the train could negotiate 100mm radius curves, however that seems like an odd design objective for an otherwise beautiful looking model.

So I did something about it.

First of all I bought the Kato/Roundhouse close coupling set (No 28-186) from RailNippon. I was pleased with their prompt service, good prices, and simple postage. The instruction sheet is very Japanese, however the diagrams are simple enough to follow.

Vestibule Replacement

With your replacements in hand, remove the vestibules from the carriages and replace them with the narrower replacements. To do this, gently push down with a fingernail on the top of the vestibule, while carefully prising it away from the body.

Be careful of the lower tabs (about 2/3rds of the way down on each side) as these hook into the body and are easily broken off. When you have the vestibule as above, you can then lift it up and out to remove it. The first one is fiddly but the rest are a breeze.

Now insert the replacements.

Insert the lower hooks first, then push it in flat against the body.

You may wish to only replace the vestibules at the Swiss flag end of each carriage to get a closer appearance; see below for further details.

Replacing the couplings

Now it's time to replace those huge Rapido couplings with something better looking. Start by turning the carriage upside down, and using both thumbs, pull the sides of the carriage apart on each side of a bogie. While doing this, pull the bogie away from the body till you see the chassis pop out slightly. Repeat on the other side. Place the top to one side.

Next step is to remove the bogies. This is actually very easy; just twist the bogie around until it pops out. This should happen at about 90 degrees.

Now very carefully extract the Rapido coupling, but do not lose the spring! No photos of this as it was all hands on deck. With the coupler pocket now vacated, gently push in the replacement coupling. When half way in I like to put the spring into place, then push it the rest of the way down.

Results

Here is the result with new diaphragms and the replacement couplings:

Much closer! But there is still an unacceptably high chance of passengers going missing between carriages! So therefore I would suggest a hybrid approach: replacing only one of the vestibules at each end, while keeping the original big one at the other end. Results of the hybrid approach:

Pretty much perfect!

If you have the Kato Glacier Express this is one upgrade I would definitely recommend.