A collision mask gets added to composite or hidden entities (mupgrade beacon in this case) that previously had no collision mask. This means that copy pasting entities that have other entities attached to them becomes impossible (in this case, recyclers).

Please prevent the addition of collision layers to entities that have none ( {layers = {}} ).

should be fixed hopefully? works on my machine now

oh that's great, I just checked, now it works with them https://mods.factorio.com/mod/James-Train-Mod too (I asked there, they said you would have to fix this, but I haven't come around yet to let you know). thanks for the fix!