The wonders of that popular auction site.

[ColinB]

I was fixing my rebuilt Hornby Merchant navy, when I noticed that I had damaged the body in my quest to get a DCC decoder to fit. So I thought I will see if there is a decent body on EBay, it was from a set so it didn't matter what name it had as there is no box. Anyway there were quite a few on there ranging from reasonable to amazingly expensive. So anyway I put a bid on one of them. Later on I was looking at Peter's Spare and he has brand new bodies listed for not much more than my maximum bid, so I thought s*lly me. Anyway, auction ends I get "outbid" by some amazing amount, which was good because I ordered the brand new one from Peters Spares. Do people not search anywhere else other than EBay?

[atom3624]

Ebay is very convenient.

Main thing is to look CAREFULLY at the photos and don't be afraid to ask questions, and ask for more photos as well to clarify anything.

Bottom line for me, I set a budget, and if it goes over ... they're like buses - some perhaps more frequent than others.

There are others and other sites, but not many.

Ebay certainly helps clarify what may be the options.

Al.

[Bulleidboy]

I agree, always check elsewhere before buying on ebay. The times I have watched an auction, and the price paid was greater than you could buy new. The same goes for scrolling down the list if there are a number of the same item for sale (not auction) - I have bought and then found if I had scolled a bit further down I could have paid a lot less - we live and learn.

Colin - I'm sure you are aware of this, but there is more room in a DCC M/N body that an analogue body. A while back I built a Merchant Navy by buying a body, a DCC Chassis and a tender. The body was an analogue version and would not fit onto a DCC chassis with out surgery. The overall cost was about the same as buying a complete loco.sleepy

[ColinB]

My Merchant Navy is quite old and I have found that a Zimo 6 pin rewired to 8 pin will fit, I have done this with other models. On my other one I rewired it so the decoder was in the tender. Where I went wrong with this one was to fit a Gaugemaster Omni one, which was a little too wide, I had filed away a bit of the body to make it fit. That particular DCC decoder doesn't seem to work that well with old locos, hence why I am changing it. So there must be 3 types, analogue, DCC in loco and DCC in tender. I have got caught up with that when updating locos where the bits can cost more than a new loco on discount.

[96RAF]

Any tender loco designed after TTS will be TTS Ready with an 8-pin decoder socket and speaker mount in the tender.

Prior to TTS all DCC Ready locos had an (4/6) 8-pin decoder socket in the loco.

Prior to DCC Ready there was no socket at all.

Service sheets list most of the associated R-nos.

[Ruffnut Thorston]

With eBay, there are options for organising the list of items...

One is lowest price including postage.

Select that, and you can find the cheaper options more easily!

wink

[Potterton]

When using ebay, don't do what I did once and forget/miss the decimal point when bidding. Intended to enter a maximum bid of 12.00 pounds, but bid 1200 pounds. Needless to say I won the auction! joy smiley