ColinB

I think there is a Service Centre somewhere on the outskirts of Canterbury. I remember sending my broken TTS decoders there.

I must admit and I put it on another thread that these locos seem awfully cheap to have a sound decoder in them but 96RAF says SS stands for Steam and Sound so I have no reason to believe differently. If you take for instance a Zimo or LokSound they are about £100, the current TTS RRP is abput £50. If they have improved the TTS I suspect its price will be more that the current TTS decoders. Trouble is these locos will probably be late, nearer the end of the year or possibly next year, so we have a long time to find out. In the case of the Black Five the price quoted is really cheap if you take the RRP of the old Black Five add on £50 for smoke generator and then say at least £50 for the TTS decoder but the whole package retails for £230, so that make the loco less than £130, which doesn't seem right.

Same in my Tesco, found the magazine but the catalogue was obscured in a different place.

I am not an expert at this, but "rights" don't last forever. Hornby had the "rights" to Thomas the Tank they don't now. I think Bachmann owns them currently, so it all depends on the original agreement. Anyway Hornby have breached the copyright they have used photos from the latest film, so I suspect the film company with be talking to them rather than Rapido, not a good position to be in. I cannot believe a company like Hornby could be so naive. Forget Rapido, they have breached the copyright of the film.

The 21 pin doesn't give you anyone (other than pins and functions) than an 8 pin decoder, it is whether they have improved the core software so that the "chuffs" are in sync. Most of us put a decent speaker on TTS anyway, so the speaker shouldn't make much difference. I think they will have difficulty fitting a 21 pin socket in their locos, in the tender not an issue, but in the loco. Even Bachmann doesn't do that, there is not enough width to lie it flat. I suppose you could put it vertically somewhere. We will wait and see.

Initially I assumed it didn't come with sound. If you take the maximum RRP of present Black Five, add cost of steam generator + sound (about £50) it is good value. Interesting to see if it stays at that and Hornby honour the preordered price.

Well in that case, that has got to be a bargain. Glad I preordered one.

You can tell by the price, I suspect it doesn't, it is not expensive enough. If it was another £40 to £50 then I would say yes. I also am wondering how they are going to get a 21 pin DCC socket into the loco, it has to be in the loco to do the control, unless they are going to add a couple of extra wires to the 4 way connector. Of course if it does come with sound that has got to be a bargain, but I fear not.

No the drawbar wouldn't create a short. It could be it with it moving it has removed the insulation on the wires of the four pin connector so as it moves it occasionally shorts. You have sent it back so not your issue any longer but if it happens with one you can't return a good idea is the buy one of those 4 pin connectors that go in the tender. Lendons do them really cheap and make yourself a "shorting" connector. Then you can disconnect the tender and run the loco on its own. Then you can work out where the short is, loco or tender.

Obviously they are not very far forward with them as there are no decent photos, so I suspect the earliest they will be around is 4th quarter 2022 or later.

@threelink I must admit I find it amazing you get locos that cheap, even my old 1980s ringfield based tender driven ones fetch about £30.00. I buy a mix of second hand and new ones. I also build some from bits and modify tender driven locos to loco driven by fitting the appropriate chassis. If you run a large layout it is virtually impossible to keep the new ones in pristine condition. With Hornby bits drop off in the box, so you can imagine what drops off on your layout. You hear people on the site say that Dapol wagons are out of scale but do you notice on many layouts? I am more interested in them not derailing. The only thing I will say about some of the newer Hornby locos is they are less likely to derail as Hornby have spent a bit of time getting the front bogie right, but on the latest Hush Hush they got it completely wrong. The one thing that has improved though is coaches, mainly I think due to the Bachmann influence but even those are at silly prices now.

I have a couple of class 50 locos I bought second hand on EBay. On the second hand models you get to realise what falls off and all its vulnerable points. Well unless they changed the design, buffers fall off and the connectors to the roof give issues. Funny I have bought a ton of Bachmann second hand diesels, class 47s, 37s nothing seems to fall off. Add to that I can mail Bachmann and get spare spares of the parts that fall off. Hornby forget it.

Hornby fell out with Hattons over a year ago, they give virtually zero stock. It appears they are trying hard with all their other retailers. I had a mail from Derails saying that Hornby are yet again changing the way they do business. The lunatic is certainly running loose.

The last post of mine was referring to the LMS Coronation coaches rather than the LNER ones. Sorry for that mistake.

The more I think about these the more I find have unanswered questions. Now according to the data these will work on DC but I assume to get the best out of them you need DCC. So that bit not much of an issue. So to control it you move the DCC controller to the loco, this is where the issues start. I assume the firebox flicker is driven by a function rather than as it is in the Princess just leds driven by a bridge rectifier on the raw DCC. So to control the steam generator you need a extra function. You could use the flying lead on an 8 pin, TTS decoders don't have this, so you go to a 21 pin as it has room for more "hardwired" functions. That is where my next concern comes, most loco bodies are not wide enough to fit a 21 pin socket in, some have difficulty even with the 8 pin. Dapol and Bachmann have gone to newer technologies to get the DCC decoder in the loco, so I wonder how Hornby will do it?

I wondered about the lighting. Interestingly I have just bought a rake of the previously released ones with lighting. Now I know Olivias gets some really bad press but they had these. Even at their eyewatering prices they look bargain basement to the new Hornby ones.

I know, in the old days it was 3 days but after last months fiasco. They must have learnt by now though, I hope.

And the year before that.

Just got an email from Hornby to let me know that this is in stock, I wonder how long it will take then to send it and whether they have improved the packing.

I am not so sure, I would be more worried about Hornby. Outsourcing everything possible, messing up delivery so they have to fix the locos with expensive UK staff, probably had to order in more bodies to fix those broken. Having a marketing department that doesn't seem to have a clue. Two price rises of over 10% each time, that to me sounds like a company in trouble.

Great the B17 drawbar doesn't come with a screw. I took mine apart it is a M2 stepped screw/bolt. A Royal Scot drawbar should be the right thread although the shoulder is longer,which is probably better anyway. Peters Spares has sold out, try EBay or Lendons.

Those stepped screws that hold the tender on, generally come with the drawbar or in the screws pack. If you want one, the easiest solution is to go into Peters Spares and look up B17 drawbar or any drawbar that comes with the right screw. Unfortunately I found Peters Spares is not very help in trying to find parts that fit from other locos. Luckily it is either an M2 or M2.5 stepped bolt which if you get really stuck you can order in Stainless from China. Yes I know its China, but as long as you don't mind waiting we work perfectly. I have got a B17 I think, I will go and find out which one it is. Usually the Royal Scot drawbar comes with the right one and it is one of the cheapest since you are going to throw the drawbar away.

If anything Hattons copied Bachmann, Rails made the Terrier as nobody else made it at the time. I gather the same goes for the Prairie. If you read the websites, on all three occasions Hornby rushed out the product to beat the opposition, originally they had no intention of making these products immediately. Then there is the 4 and 6 coaches and the Stephensons Rocket 3rd class wagon. As for the Lion no interest for me, it just annoys me that they are late for every product even when there isn't a pandemic so why waste the effort trying to beat someone else. Generally most people preorder this stuff so if you are late to the party unless you have a cheaper brilliant model, people will stick with their original order. I stuck with my Hattons orders for coaches on principle and cost.

No, its not, 96RAF knows more, I think its a condensing system similar to those cigarette substitutes, but I don't really know. Jenny Kirk has a video on YouTube showing it working but no real detail.

XJR1300 that program was a real eye opener for me, probably not in the way it was intended. I think you summed it up quite well Hornby caters for a long established customer base, that is probably getting smaller every year. What company cuts out its two major retailers and then "screws" the rest of them. The thing that was interesting was it seemed everything was down to one person and there were an awful lot of "just" jobs. We now see that they will be going full bore to beat another supplier to a model, probably meaning that it will get to the customer earlier but probably tarnishing their name as it was developed too quickly, as has happened with many of their previous attempts. Then people wonder why they keep increasing their prices at significantly above inflation.