Hornby Vent Van with sound

[philandsue]

I was considering purchasing the vent van with sound to add realism to my 'Heritage steam railway' layout.

When i read description of latest vwersion I did read incorrectly as I thought new sounds had been added to those on original Vent Van. Having purchased one, from another retailer, I was very disappointed to find limited, mostly non railway related sounds. i have now returned item to seller.

just wondered why the initial version is not now available as the sounds seem so much more appropriate.

 

 

 

[96RAF]

Obviously VV-1 has sold out. Google the R num.ner and see if anyone has them in stock somewhere.

 

Nowadays these things are introduced as a limited quantity production run of the number of units Hornby think they can flog based on pre-orders, mainly generated from major retailers.

 

VV-2 sound sets were based on what Joe Public had said they would like to hear. Obviously your choice wasn’t in that survey.

 

Whether VV1 would ever be sent for another production run would depend upon if Hornby thought there was enough interest. How do you convince them of that as an individual. Please Mr Hornby can I have one or maybe even two or the likes of Hattons or Rails saying please can I have 500 or 1000.

 

Maybe VV-3 or VV-4 or VV-5 will have what you want if the range ever gets that far.

[ColinB]

Hornby seemed to have curtailed their TTS decoder range, I compared the 2019 catalogue with the 2020 catalogue and there were at least 2 less this year. Now seeing it is only blowing a signature into a ROM, I feel there must be some sales strategy associated with it, to make us rush to buy it before it sells out. You cannot find a class 37 TTS decoder at the moment, it hasn't been out for a year yet, you would have thought they would have monitored how well they were selling and got some more made. I suppose we are lucky in they are thinking of making some more. The more profitable firms not only look at advanced orders but how well they are selling. In the case of TTS decoders it is a decent income for very little outlay (I would be surprised if a TTS steam decoder is physically any different to a diesel one).

[96RAF]

As has been explained time and again Colin, any reorders (not just TTS) are driven by expected demand and how is that gauged - maybe by rate of sell out?  - unlikely if a production run was enabled by pre-order sales as they are obviously all likely to have been sold before delivery anyhow.

 

Do all the retailers send back sales stats to Hornby to help them gauge when to make a re-run for any product line - likely not. Such intelligence is probably just gleaned ad-hoc from something as simple as a sales request - we need 99 of these please - in stock or not?

 

An initial production run would also be shared twixt factory fit locos and retro kits, meaning the retro kit balance to sale could well be much less than any retro kit re-run later.

 

As for your suggested - its just blowing a file onto a ROM. Yes we know that - I could do it for you, by loading a blank decoder with the base firmware for that loco type and then the associated sound file - but it has to be done in quantity, in a production environment to achieve a calculated profit through economy of scale at a business level. Bashing out the odd one for you or your mate and packaging it is just not financially viable. Where does the packaging for that TTS decoder variant come from - yet another production run by yet another sub-contract firm, as and when fitted into their production schedule. I am sure the firm that prints Hornby packets and boxes also prints other stuff for many other firms. Hornby would not have the facility to bash these out on the office printer one at a time just for you or me.

 

As for the difference between TTS steam and diesel that also has been explained several times. But for you I will say it again. The methodology is completely different in assembling the operating software sequence. Steam relies totally upon bemf to control the chuff rate and when to turn chuff/coast on/off and it cycles between as many as 18 sound bytes. Diesel however uses a very limited number of fixed ‘notches’ of engine noise and clicks up and down between them, no need for a motor at all as you can notch up at a stand still say if using the loco as a stationary generator or running it at a certain power level on the move to emulate a double headed ETH (electric train heating) support loco.

 

You need to be realistic about the difference between running a largish business like Hornby and running a hobby commerce like Jack the Lad in his garage.

 

[ColinB]

@RAF96   I see your point but boxes, they are all the same it is just a stick on label, as for the back emf that is just reading from an anologue channel and applying the necessary correction. The diesels probably have the same channel but just don't do anything with the data. Actually I wasn't saying just bash out the odd one, in the case of certain models it would probably be another batch of 1000. Please don't lecture me on embedded software, I spent 30 years writing it, from using assembler to the C language, ranging from programming roms, to the current flash eprom. I was responsible for setting up the software from scratch, operating system, interrupt and input handlers, so yes I know a little about software. As for the difference between diesel and steam, it is just a program loaded into rom. They probably both use a PIC to do it, as for the sound if I remember rightly unless it has changed it it just a case of loading data into digital to analogue converter. Incidentally it probably takes about 30 seconds to program one these, I doubt they have much memory.  Anyway, not my problem. Funny working for one of the major Automotive businesses in the world you do learn an awful lot about process, production, where to make money and surprisingly where to lose it. 

[Howbi]

I have several TTS decoders, both steam and diesel........they all work to my satisfaction........the decoders are a reasonable size and a reasonable price and perform reasonably well.........I do not need to know how they are programmed, in what language, in what type of memory or any other technical detail.........so do we really need to have all this speculation about them, it's getting tedious...........HB.

[ColinB]

No we don't, I was just complaining that they don't seem to be very good at satifying demand until someone tried to point out how difficult it was to make them, which it is not.  

[96RAF]

You obviously know much more about these things than me or anyone else in the world by the sound of it Colin.

 

The burn process is not difficult. No one said it was, just that the administrative process of churning out ad-hoc resupply is not viable.

I can reprogram a controller or decoder in a few seconds once it is set up. That is not the problem. The business process is the problem.

 

As Howard says its getting boring now so lets quit while we are losing.

[ColinB]

Anyway they must have changed their strategy, it appears they are doing a rerun of class 37s and class 66s if their website is to be believed, previously that would have been it. Anyway you are right, I will give the subject a miss and they are sending me a new socket for my damaged one in my King loco.

[paul_bridger]

Getting back to the initial question. I agree that the original tts vent van was far more useful than the second. The ability to have the train departing and then the train arriving sound meant I did not have to put a sound decoder in my terriers. BRILLIANT.

Only problem is the only original tts vent van I have seen for sale recently sold for £75!