ColinB

This is deviating a bit from the subject but up until recently it cost more to "ship" the goods out of the dock than "ship" them halfway across the world. I would like to see the stuff made in the UK, but I can see lots of reasons why it is not possible. Plus once a manager gets it in their brain that it is cheaper in a certain place, it is very difficult to change their mind. Moving production means risk, most managers don't like risk. As to the carbon, I think you can twist that argument anyway you want, the "Greens" used to ride around in 2CVs thinking they were saving the planet, not realising that their emissions were probably dirtier than a heavy truck. If Hornby want to produce things in China then that is ok, but don't come back to the public whining about the cost of Shipping going up, that is part of your calculations when you move your production to a foreign land. Just remember the heaviest polluters are China and the USA, looking at the chart on the BBC we come very low down, so shutting down our industry and riding around in supposedly non polluting cars is not going to make a great deal of difference.

Ok 96RAF this a a lot off subject but this is what you could do. Railmaster sends USB to Xlink or Elite to drive the DCC. There is no reason why Hornby could not write an App than would send those same commands from a piece of software that has the same user interface as an Elite. So basically you do not need a new colour Elite, which is probably why they are not developing it. You just write a package that sits on your PC or phone that does all the menus that an Elite does, then converts them into the equivalent USB commands. It is the sort of thing I used to all the time. Unfortunately, this doesn't fix the current issue with Zimo decoders but perhaps an option for the future. It seems looking at all the advertising data, Hornby already do this type of thing with Scalextrix.

I think you summed it up there Chrissaf with the words "if you know how to do the workarounds". No I don't use Railmaster it came with my Elite, I have a copy that refuses to load, I must admit I went no further. I really have no need of it, I have an Elite to program my locos and a Fleishmann box to run my layout. Eventually when I get round to it I will get one of the more modern wireless systems like what YouChoos do, where the supplier gives me a list of the remote commands it supports, so I can write my own user interface.

He probably would have baulked at £42. It is actually more, a decent Hornby DCC socket is about £4.50, most of the other ones are not that good other than the guy in Gloucestershire that sells decent ones for just over a £1.00 (he hasn't any at the moment). Then there is the DCC socket holder, plus you are going to have to pay P & P on this stuff probably multiple times as you cannot get it all from the same place.

But Flashbang you are missing the point, it will cost nearly that amount in bits, in my analysis I forgot about the lights. There is a guy I fix locos for, that I don't charge any labour as I enjoy fixing the locos and I get to see locos I don't have. Since I retired I need to have a challenge. Plus I suppose I know he knows nothing about electrics. Even then the bits can soon mount up. If it was your own loco you can use second hand bits and take a chance. If it is for someone else it has to work and work reliably. Well that is my attitude but looking at the state of some of this guy's locos that have supposedly been fixed previously by a professional repairer, I do wonder. Generally though I never charge labour he does normally add extra to the bill, but that is his choice.

Mine charges recommended retail, then complains he doesn't sell any locos.

I suppose the thing is as long as you don't want the latest and greatest, then it isn't in the realms of the rich. As long as Hornby don't force retailers to stop discounting old stock then if you wait, quite often you can get a loco relatively cheap. The bigger issue at the moment is the greed of the secondhand merchants. I was round my loco model shop and noticed he had a secondhand Hornby Arriva class 67 for sale for more than what I paid for the same model new off Hereford Model Centre a month ago. Admittedly, Hereford Model Centre seem to always have old stock at reasonable prices, but it just shows that buying second hand is not always cheaper. After all the fuss with preorders, unless you desperately want that model, it appears it is better to wait. Of course if at the new prices Hornby models don't sell (and remember there is only a finite number of stupidly rich people), then there will be even more to pick up discounted.

I have never used Railmaster but reading about what it does it appears it is one one those packages where you have to define everything (software went through a phase of doing that), it obviously doesn't have a feature where it allows you to send raw commands. In effect emulating all the Elite functions but with a decent screen. It is not going to happen now, but anyone who has "Hornby's ears" perhaps a thing to suggest.

I must admit when I do one I don't add up the cost, but working it out that is quite reasonable. Decoder at £20.00 + postage £4.00 (you need something like a Zimo with a higher current limit), socket £5.00. So you are charging him about £20.00 or less for doing the conversion which is at least 1 to 2 hours work, plus you need to add the wire and nylon screws. Hattons etc would charge an awful lot more than that. Do you know I am clearing out my old tender driven stuff all converted to DCC (mainly chassis) with sockets and they very rarely sell for much. Some people just don't understand how much work goes into doing this stuff.

Having read the issue again I can see why you have to use RailMaster, eLink doesn't have a keyboard. Sadly a pretty bad thing to get wrong.

Just to reinforce previous responses, I mainly use Zimo normal decoders and Zimo Sound decoders and using the Elite there are no issues at all in changing the address of the loco. I would go further and say that it works better with them than my Hornby TTS decoders. I assume the Select working without Railmaster would probably do the same.

As I have stated earlier Hornby have probably got additional costs because of Shipping, cost of components (the price of plastic has been going up) and even the cost of Chinese labour is more. Probably seeing that they have been having issues meeting the demand for their new locos, that now was the time for a substantial increase. I do hope that marketing, seeing the figures for last year, don't think that the rise in demand will continue. Otherwise I think they have a big shock coming. Bachmann do the same, it is just that they have the sense to realise that if a product doesn't sell, they allow the retailers to set it at a price where it will.

Try Lendons they seem to have things other people do not.

So far all the parallel threads on my Hornby locos are M2 or M2.5, but I am not surprised that they use M2.2, which I assume are the self tapping screws. You get get all sorts from China and just lately they Ship really fast. Thanks for the info on the M2.2, I knew they were bigger than M2, but I just assumed that they were M2.3. Either way other than "Laptop Screws" generally I have found that they all come from China, the UK outlets are not interested in small quantities.

Unfortunately from my experience there seems to be no particular models that have this. The only one that reliably seems to have this is the rebuilt Royal Scot. I have a Princess Royal that has the beginnings of it, a Battle of Britain where the weight had succumbed and a tender weight that was beginning to show the same. So it appears you pay your money and take a chance. It is a real shame that Hornby or one of the parts outlets don't do replacement chassis. It also seems to show itself on the various weights that Hornby include in a loco, which sadly they don't list as spare parts.

On some of these rebuilt Merchant Navy locos, there is very little room for mounting the electronics in the loco, plus these locos have very fine valve gear which can easily get broken when you try squeezing the decoder in. What I did was buy a spare X6113 lead and the corresponding socket and mount the electronics in the tender. On the Duchess you can buy the latest tender bottom which makes it easier, unfortunately I think Hornby changed the tender body mounting locations, so you cannot do the same. I just cut a hole in the tender bottom to accept the 4 pin socket and put the 8 pin DCC socket in the tender. You will also find that in the tender there is lots of room to mount a speaker if you want to use TTS. The motor on these is very similar to the latestone Hornby make so wiring the 4 pin wire is relatively easy.

I gather from a source at my local model shop, that is exactly what Bachmann are doing at the moment when they were quoted a wait of 3 months.

It should be an M2 parallel thread screw. It might have a step on it but it probably doesn't matter People are always on about screw packs, generally Hornby have run out, the Service Sheet generally doesn't say what thread it is. I get mine from https://www.laptopscrewsdirect.com/ they do decent screws and you can choose your length. If not, use EBay and buy a pack of 50 from China. It might be a M2.5 but on all mine they are M2s. Hornby generally use either M2 or M2.3 self tapping screws, or M2 parallel thread. I got this info by basically measuring them when I was rebuilding a loco. If the loco is older they were still using 6 ba and 8 ba screws, but you loco is relatively new.

Don't bother, I took my Bon Accord apart to see what it looked like. Nothing like X9945.

I bought a scrap chassis which turned out to be a Tornado one. The part that the motor sits on and also doubles up as a gear retainer has no part number on the Service Sheet, so virtually impossible to obtain without buying another scrap chassis. Does anyone know if X9945 is the same part? I know it comes from a different loco but it definitely looks about the same shape.

I think those early Lok Sounds weren't that reliable either.

I bet that firm that does a rail transport from China to Essex is thinking this is great. At those prices moving stuff by transcontinental railway starts to become competitive.

My old firm decided to ship their instrument cluster software out to India, in the UK one person did it. After a while the management could not understand why it was costing so much until we pointed out that they employed 20 people to do the same job. As an Indian software engineer is costed at 25% of a UK one, they were effectively employing 5 people and it still didn't work. Usually it involved endless meetings to get them to fix it. The Chinese though are usually pretty good so not that bad a choice to put production there. I feel Hornby's issues lie closer to home in their procedures, multiple part numbers for the same thing is not a help, then there is the issue that the locos are no longer toys and need a bit of expertise to put them together. Then there is the long communication link to production. I get the opinion that they design each loco separately with no coordinated approach with little or few common parts, even Triang did that. You just have to look on each one, how the body is attached or in a lot of cases the different ways a tender body attaches to the chassis.

I must admit I agree with threelink, although my new Hornby locos go really well, I have recently picked up some old second hand duchess locos, the version previous to the present one. Now you have to be careful as some people ask unrealistic amounts or bid ridiculously high, but the ones I have bought lately have been half the price. Admittedly I have to fix a few bits and I normally upgrade them to DCC with the socket in the tender, but they go really well. The funny thing about pre ordering, well in my case, I will happily pre order a loco at full price or 10% below that, but when it comes to buying them after release I normally wait for a decent deal on them. Now Hornby have messed up the pre ordering system, I doubt I will be pre ordering many more.

I was already beginning to wonder about pre orders. I got into a panic pre ordering the blue East Asiatic Company Merchant Navy, thinking it would be desirable and sell out. Having had my order at Rails cancelled, then all the issues with Hattons. I got so worried I pre ordered it off two different suppliers, meaning to cancel one of them. Well I ended up with two as they virtually shipped together and now to add salt to the wound, I notice Bure Valley are doing it at 25% off. So 96RAF I am pretty sure you are right. Hornby are in a corner, they have to increase the price because of increased labour costs in China and now the shipping but then that is entirely of their own making.