Magnetic Couplers from Hornby!

Well the Hornby 2023 00 scale product launch was posted this morning on their website, some really nice items there (including some new Dublo loco's and some more Beatles themed stuff which caught my eye). 

However one interesting and nice surprise which I'd not heard about coming are some magnetic couplers, ideally designed I think for hooking carriages together they come in a couple of different flavours/lengths and are I think a great idea.  I'll be interested to see how well they perform on a long train as the weight of say 10 carriages may be a bit too much for the magnets, but nonetheless for shorter and more practical length trains (who has the room for a 10 carriage train after all) they should work fine.  The only other thing that I should note is these are really only for the more recent carriage/loco releases as they are designed to plug into standard NEM pockets, so the older carriages with the standard tension lock couplings which are screwed on will be more difficult to convert (I feel a screw on NEM coupler pocket will need to be designed to be 3D printed maybe!!).

Anyway have a look here;

https://uk.hornby.com/products/buckeye-m...pack-r7398

https://uk.hornby.com/products/vacuum-pi...19mm-r7400

https://uk.hornby.com/products/vacuum-pi...20mm-r7399

[Super]

Those magnetic knuckles look pretty cool.

Indeed, I think the knuckle type are intended more for goods trains, as the carriages will have vacuum pipes for the braking systems.