ColinB

Thank you for the information on the Peco and Dapol Pantographs, I naturally assumed they worked like the old Triang/Hornby ones, but obviously not. I was thinking of using them on my layout, but I am probably not now.

As to the steam unit, I think I would prefer to buy it ready fitted anyway.

There is an apology that comes up at the beginning of the program about sub titles.

Thanks for all the information, sounds like I am not the only one that has issues. Megan at AC Models phoned me a couple of months ago to tell me that there was an issue with a part I ordered, anyway I was saying to here about different part number labelling for the same part. Duchess, Princess and Royal Scot tenders being a prime example. If you order a tender bottom for one of them it comes without pickups for another it includes then but basically they are the same part. Seeing as LMS used the same tender on a lot of locos that would make sense anyway. Giving them different part numbers just confuses the uneducated parts supplier. I suppose from my point of view it is good because not everyone knows this, so quite often if say Duchess tender parts have run out, you can use the Royal Scot ones. Perhaps if Simon is that interested in us keeping a loco for life, he might one day sort it out.

Sorry Edit doesn't work again. I imagine it is like most queries if the person that answers it is in a good mood or knows more than the rest then they will go the extra mile. I lost a wheel centre on my old Focus, after 3 trips to the main dealer giving me the wrong part after ordering it (Ford Employee so I cannot get discount on emergency orders). On the final visit, different store man, got one immediately, appeared it was the one they always kept in stock.

That is what I was hoping they would do for me, but they didn't. Yes I did send an electronic marked up copy.

I forgot to mention I did think an M7 motor holder might work, the shape looks about the same as the Tornedo motor bottom holder. I did think said supplier might be able to help with dimensions to see if it could fit, but again they failed.

Sadly I tried that, I even tried to see if they were in any other Service Sheet but sadly not. Hornby seem to do this with a lot of the weights that screw into the loco. Unfortunately when you buy one second hand they are occasionally missing, sometimes people take them out to get more room for sound. I don't really blame Hornby although it defeats me why they don't give it a number when they do give more obscure parts a number, no the thing that annoys me is the fact of how unhelpful a certain supplier is. The thing I find more galling is that on the suppliers site they have parts from broken parts of the same loco, so they must know what the parts are. Unfortunately, when you question them they stop sending Email replies. I have bought another chassis with the parts on, but I don't like doing this as I usually unable to stop myself building yet another loco with the bits left over. I need to go to a model railway exhibition to find someone that strips locos. Given that there are many about that are scrapped for lack of spare parts, there must be people that sell them as spares.

I recently acquired a Tornado chassis, there were a couple of parts missing from it. The weight that doubles up as the DCC pcb holder and the motor base that also doubles up as the gearbox top. Go to the service sheet and surprisingly these parts are not labelled. So anyway I mail a couple of parts suppliers to ask if they ever get these bits second hand, obviously without a part number they are not going to get them new. The first one gives me me a rude reply saying that without a part number can do even though I mentioned that they didn't have a part number on the service sheet. That Supplier also has a lot of Railroad parts from broken models, so they must know the parts. The second one says virtually the same although a bit more politely. Now I am new to the latest range of Hornby locos, being more familiar with building classic Triumph motorcycles, but I can recognise the major parts without a part number. I have even noticed which parts can be interchanged between models. Now I don't sell Hornby parts and I also don't advertise that I am expert at them (as one of them does) so how come they know so little. I will add on the previous two occasions when I have asked a technical question to one of them they didn't know either. Funny in the Classic Bike world, if you sell parts you generally know a lot about them. In the end I bought a chassis off EBay that has the parts, a bit more expensive but I can probably sell on the parts left over.

Could it be something wrong with the display, as it warms up it starts to lose areas of the display. You could try seeing if you change menus whether that of the display gets written too, that would at least prove it is not software.

Settrack is very much like the Hornby "ready to run track" has a greater distance between tracks when you use points, has smaller radius points. Streamline is more like the scaled down real thing although the rail is too high. The distance between tracks is less and you get a much better choice of points to use. I use code 100 Streamline throughout my layout. Hope that helps.

Well atom3624 you are right it probably is possible to do it. I just get the opinion that the way these sound decoders are configured that with the current range of decoders it isn't, lack of memory being one issue.

So do you think Hornby will develop it? I liked the concept but I didn't like the way you had to fill it up by taking the smoke box door off. Perhaps if Hornby developed it, they would find a better way.

The loco with the smoke unit looked similar to the one Jenny Kirk reviewed, so perhaps they were evaluating it.

I had to a laugh when Simon said this is a model that will last a lifetime. Thinking, yes as long as it doesn't break anything and you gave it to a reputable manufacturer that does not have an issue with mazak rot, since spares for the latest Hornby locos are nigh on impossible to find, but I am sure his heart is in the right place.

I think back emf gives you the speed of the motor, it is a long time since I did electric motor theory. I think the bigger issue is that TTS decoders don't have much memory compared to the super expensive sound decoders, so they are limited in what they can do. I just accept them for what they are a cheap alternative to a normal decoder. On certain of my locos I have Zimo and LokSound decoders, but it is not economic to fit them to all my TTS locos. I would like to but it is not going to happen.

I can only assume that the chuffs have to be incorporated into the speed software, which is either difficult or something Hornby has no control over. I think on the Loksound decoders there is a CV you have to set up.

I had exactly this same issue with a loco I bought second hand. When I posted the fault someone mentioned that there were some early Hornby decoders that failed this way. You could try resetting the decoder, I did have one where someone had managed to load an address of 2. I suspect though, it is the same fault as I had. If it doesn't recover after resetting the decoder, buy a new one.

This an old Mainline loco I suspect. Ignore me if I am telling my Granny to suck eggs. The two silver plates press against the brushes on the motor and are connected to the chassis via the holding screws. If I remember correctly the left one screws into an extender that is isolated from the half of the chassis it is screwed to by a long tube. You need to buy two screws the same thread as the ones that hold the plates on and a small nylon washer. Now take out the screws that hold the silver plates on and replace them with the nylon ones. On the right hand one place the nylon washer between chassis and plate, to stop the plate touching the chassis. Now red goes to one side of the chassis, so find something to attach it to and similarly black to the other side. In my case i drilled and tapped M2 holes, so I could use solder tags. Now attach orange and grey wires to the silver plates which are the brush holders, either by solder tags or soldering directly. If I have missed anything out, could someone fill in the missing bits. I converted mine at the beginning of lockdown, then realised the Bachmann chassis was better although harder to convert, so I converted them to Bachmann chassis.

Have a check around all your dcc connections. It sounds like you have a short between pickups and motor connections, that would definitely blow up a decoder. On one of my A4 chassis, I found the large "glob" of solder on the motor bottom connector was touching the chassis. I don't have much experience of Loksound decoders blowing up, so I don't know if there is an inherent problem. Also check the impedance of the speaker is correct.

You are probably right, perhaps February/March 2022 is nearer reality. They will need to release something near Christmas though, if they want to make money.

I have tried junior hacksaw route which is a bit similar to a razor saw but I found that the rail had to be held and it was impossible to cut it with the rail in position. Then I used the Dremel that worked a lot better, but not too accurate. After reading these pages I decided to use a Xuron after everyone said they worked. I must I was a bit apprehensive at first, I have seen tools like this snap before but I was surprised, it does work. You are right about it pinching the rail, so I normally clean it up with the Dremel or a needle file. It is also easier to get the length more accurate with the Xuron as you can do it with the track in situ.

The LokSound decoder has this function, does your loco contain one of these? To switch it off you you just press the same function key again.

I must admit I would run it. I have bought many second hand locos that appear to be in pristine condition and never run. Unless you are a collector and hope in a couple of years time to sell it at a profit, then there is no point.Generally though prices don't always increase that much anyway. I just sold a load of my 1980s/1990s locos most in pristine condition as I never got round to running them, I now run DCC so I replaced them with newer versions. I generally got what I paid for them all those years ago. Run them and enjoy them.

I converted my old ringfield locos to 5 pole motors, well the ones where it was easy. I never did get the DCC concepts dcc decoders to work that well, I found that the Zimo £20 ones worked so much better. I found that for some reason the DCC concepts decoders seem to have issues with current limits, the Zimo had a better specification. In the end I found all my old Ringfield based bodies would fit the new Hornby chassis, so that is what I did. It is nice to know though that the CD conversion kit works well, I read so many contradictory posts.