Tolak

If the loco is DCC, then the battery trick is unlikely to work. (Enabling "Run on DC" is possible, but not in the default settings). It may be worth checking with the battery, to confirm that the loco does contain a decoder. If the loco is not DCC (ie it is DC), then the conversation about the eLink and Elite are misleading. (This set is DCC, so this comment is just for completeness) The usual diagnostic is to use a second loco to decide if the power source or the loco is at fault; this is still viable here. The key difference with DCC is that you have to be able to address the decoder; if you don't have the address (which should be address 3, from the factory) then you will struggle to get the loco to respond. If you have a friend who has a working DCC setup, confirm if the loco is working and on Address 3. A local train shop should be happy to assist, too. Was the set new from a shop, or has anyone had a chance to play with it?

Has anyone noticed that the teddy bear in Santa's present wagon is outside the loading gauge, and so his/her/its ears are at risk of becoming frazzled by the OLE? So cruel!

Although the comment about selecting the wrong app would appear logical, Hornby do promote the idea that the HM6000 can be used to power the track, and so the HM|DC app will be in use, as well as the HM|DCC app. As mentioned, don’t update the decoder in the wrong app. There’s some scary levels of knowledge in the group; thanks, guys!

In order to reduce the confusion, is it not useful to measure the resistance between each pair of the three wires. The wire that is common between the two lowest resistances is the common return, and the other two are the drives in each direction. (I would expect the resistance measured for the other pair to be the sum of the two lowest values)

@Bee ”Garrets and Big Boys may require 2 rotary encoders, as the timing between the two sets of drivers is not fixed. There are two sets of 4 chuffs, but the phase relationship between those two sets can change, wheel slip being a primary example.” For the Rivarossi Big Boy, both wheel sets are driven from the same motor, so only one rotary encoder might be needed. Unless, like me, you have stripped it down to ensure that the valve gears are not “in step”. ;)

@Bee i don’t think the rotary encoder needs to know which pulse is “the one”, as it only needs a trigger to drive the next chuff. Hopefully, the chuff sequence is matched to the loco, ie six chuffs, but not all the same. Looking at Sam’s strip down, I would estimate that the vanes are 40 degrees wide, so if the chuffs were exactly sync’d going forward, they would be approx 20 degrees late in reverse. (Note, this is the back edge of the adjacent vane when running in reverse, so the gap accounts for the delay). Still chuffing at 6 beats to the bar, but with slight worse sync. if this comes from the TXS decoder, I wonder if that will become a useful add-on to all these sound chips? I would expect the vane to be quite easy to fit; easier than the magnets! (Or, using the other function of an optical decoder, use a reflective ring on a wheel to trigger the chuffs) As RAF says, we can look forward to seeing this in the flesh. Or at least, the Rohss friendly solder. Anon

Hi, Bee, thanks for the update. I have just watched Sam's review, and it appears that the vanes on the disc have six elements, so I would expect these use an optical sensor to drive the chuff directly, and not to require any more sophisticated decoding. (For the Black 5, we would need 4 vanes per rev, but the FS can use the same 6 vane disc. Has anyone done a similar review of the new Black 5 to see what its vane looks like?) After all, we only really need the six beats per revolution; any loss of sync *could* be corrected by the decoder, but would probably be ignored. If the sync is so far out that you can tell that the timing of one set of valves can be seen to be incorrect, then I suspect we would have to force the vane round to correct that rotational error (effectively re-"quartering" the vane. But the error can only be 60°, so the perceived error will be ±30°, which might not be enough to notice. At least the pulse rate will be correct! And Interesting to see what the pulse timing will be in reverse! Regards, Tolak.

Interesting that your description has the start of the inlet and the start of the exhaust at TDC. I though the reverser/cutoff effectively reduced the effect of the inlet valve (effectively the valve throw, and hence the "gain" of the inlet valve), but would not have changed the timing. Hence if the inlet valve at full opening opened at TDC and shut at TDC+70° (ie resulting in a 70° opening period), backing off the valve opening would affect both ends of the opening timing, and hence might achieve opening at TDC+20°, and closing at TDC+(70-20)°, so the valve opening would be shut-off by 40° less period (ie only 30° opening period in this case). This means the exhaust would change timing, too, by a similar effect. I suspect it would take video footage to see that when the cut-off would be advanced, since the timing would be hard to see when the loco was running fast enough to benefit from the change of the cut-off. And to that end, I agree that the chuff timing at lower speed is the main definition; having the back-EMF (error) define the aggression of the chuff might provide a "simple" mechanism, where higher error (ie working harder) gives a more agressive chuff, and low error (eg coasting) would give a softer chuff. I also note your comment about the rotary encoder; this is much more detailed than our most common rotary machine (the car engine) that only has a TDC sensor and evaluates the timing of the other events (sparks) based on % of duration between the TDC events. With both systems, the TDC (Home) event has to be remembered, so loss of power would lose sync of the chuffs until the next TDC/Home event occurs. Thanks for the discussion, Regards,

Chris, What is the function of the two pins on the HM6010 labelled DCC? Thanks, Tom

In the latest reveal about the HM6000, it appears that the information about the loco (max speed, inertia, etc) are entered into a track section, and cannot be easily loaded by loading a predefined loco into that track section control. Do you read the information to have this meaning? https://www.hornby.com/uk-en/shop/power-control/hm-analogue-control.html

In the recent reveal about the HM6000, the inertia values (and probably other values like sound choices) appear to be linked to the section of track. It would be better if these were associated with a loco, so a section could be configored for a loco with fewer (preferably one) steps.

No mention of the "Walter K Whigham" 60028 in experimental purple (R3701). Would that have been at the same time as the "plum and spilt milk" coach colours? So would this be very early Mk1 coaches, or just a repaint of the legacy coaches, to provide a rake of the appropriate express coaches? I have no recollection of there ever being coaches in that colour scheme in model format, but only recently having recognised the colour scheme, I may have considered the colours a corruption of the "blood and custard" scheme. I suspect once I have worked out what I have, and done a bit more research, I will be looking to create the "plum and spilt milk" to support the experimental purple. (I now have 7 colours of A4; Silver, Garter blue, Black, LNER green, Experimental purple, Express blue, BR Green. I hadn't noticed that BR reintroduced Garter blue, without valances, so there may be more to seek out! )