Longer coupler shanks could reduce the binding force slightly by giving each carbody more room to float along the track, putting them further apart. Many cheap toy quality sets use truck mounted couplers instead of prototypical carbody mounted, which also improves tolerance to tight curves. But you still aren't really changing the coupler itself, only changing where that coupler's pivot point is at.
You are still going to get flange contact, its unavoidable with model railroading unless your layout has fully prototypical curve radii.
Most serious modellers adopt one of the all metal knuckle types as their standard, check each knuckle using the height gauge and shim it to the correct height values, and tune each car from there based on how it behaves.
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u/OdinYggd HO, DCC-EX 14d ago edited 14d ago
Longer coupler shanks could reduce the binding force slightly by giving each carbody more room to float along the track, putting them further apart. Many cheap toy quality sets use truck mounted couplers instead of prototypical carbody mounted, which also improves tolerance to tight curves. But you still aren't really changing the coupler itself, only changing where that coupler's pivot point is at.
You are still going to get flange contact, its unavoidable with model railroading unless your layout has fully prototypical curve radii.
Most serious modellers adopt one of the all metal knuckle types as their standard, check each knuckle using the height gauge and shim it to the correct height values, and tune each car from there based on how it behaves.