ColinB

As long as your Bachmann controller is meant for model trains and is not a DCC controller, then it will work perfectly. The Hornby controller is only a variable 12 volt controller with generally a 0.5 amp limit.

I know this post is pretty old but just to add I found that my Princess Elizabeth has the same "rot" issue. I already had it on my rebuilt Scot, I just assumed it only effected the rebuilt scot and 9fs but it appears I was wrong. It seems it not only goes brittle but hard as well. I broke a drill and blunted a M2 tap trying to fix the old Scot chassis ( fortunately I found a decent second hand one on EBay).

If the 8 pin pcb was one of those early Hornby ones I am not surprised. They seem to incredibly difficult to solder to, and when you do you have to be so careful that the solder doesn't splash over to the next pad. Also the pins on the socket don't always seem to make contact even though you know you soldered them. Then if by chance you leave the soldering iron on the pad for too long you either lift the track or the individual socket falls out. I am pleased to say the new ones from Hornby which they released in the last year, are tons better.

I must admit when I read the title I thought that can't be right. Amazon only sells what Hornby gives it, so it would be a bit difficult unless Hornby made a bad batch. On about Amazon they did yet another of their deals at the weekend A4 TTS decoder for £29.95, for one day only.

I imagine it is a "cost save" on Hornby's part, if you look at the latest Bachmann A4 you will see how they do it. Hornby probably realised that the rear Pony truck is a constant source of derailment on some models and doesn't look that realistic, so they came up with this solution. I must admit I have loads of locos with it (all the latest Hornby ones) and it is not an issue and they do look nearer to the original prototype.

I must admit I am tending towards the etched ones, they probably will look better.

I bought a second hand Britannia with a view to robbing its chassis. When it arrived it was too good to do that, so I repaired it. Unfortunately it is missing a right hand smoke deflector. It is R2562. Now Peters Spares do replacement ones for the old Margate models, but not the China based ones. I have compared the existing smoke deflector with the old one on my Margate made Morning Star. They look about the same just the handrails are different, being more detailed on the later one. Has anyone else had this issue or is it easier to just replace the both of them with etched ones. I did mail Peters Spares but they said they have never tried fitting their ones to the newer model.

Here is the simple test I do. With a multimeter check resistance between adjacent pins, they should all read high impedance except between pins 1 and 5. Amazingly I have measured values ranging from 10 ohms to 100 ohms between pins 1 and 5, which is effectively the motor resistance (10 ohms seems very low, but the motor worked). Next put the loco on the track and check pins 4 and 8 go to the track. Now check that pins 1 or 5 are not connected to the track by measuring the impedance/resistance. I suspect in your case one of the motor wires has fell off, probably touching the chassis as it did it. That would smoke the decoder.

I use the Iphone ones from the same place, to me even better.

I think if I remember someone on EBay was doing replacement gears on their own for the 0-6-0, all the normal outlets were sold out, I think Going Spare told me where to find them. I think I had to get a blue one instead of the original black one. With the Flying Scotsman there are three ways to fix it, one is buy a complete set of wheels. Next one is compare the gear with any of the intermediate gear kits, I found the one of the gears that comes with X8849 in its various forms works with a Duchess, Hornby surprisingly seem to use a constant set of gears for most of their Pacifics. The third solution is to send the broken gear off to UltraScale products and get a brass replacement, that is what I will do next time. I would not recommend glueing the gear unless you absolutely have to. The tooth on the one you glue is general a fraction bigger which at slow speed can cause jerking. I recently fixed a loco for a friend where someone had glued the gear. He was complaining that the wheels didn't move smoothly which I eventually traced to the glued gear.

Check the capacitor across the motor, I have had them go short circuit before now.

I would be surprised if the motor has gone bang, when a decoder fries it gives off tons of smoke. The only thing is that perhaps the motor went short circuit taking the decoder with it, but that is rare. Are you sure one of the stray wires didn't touch the chassis, that normally fries them.

Anyway Chrissaf I must admit I didn't know you could get really small ones, so thank you for the information. I can see why Hornby didn't progress it any further, as you say they are probably reasonably reliable for reading "there" or "no there" signals, I am not so sure about picking up a barcode type message at variable distances. Anyway they didn't market it so that is that.

According to the datasheet that only has a sensing distance of 6 mm but in you case I suspect it works, but would it be fast enough to read a bar code?

Yes 96RAF I understood that, I read the information. So we are talking about reflective with a infra red LED coupled to a photo diode or transistor. Now if you look at what is commercially available although they might well fit between the sleeper but they are rather large. The numbers involved wouldn't make it economic to make your own. Then you have the issue of range, not all locos are the same so with some locos it might not even work, the distance between bottom of loco to sensor being very different. That is why a lot of people use lasers. I think I can now see why Hornby didn't pursue it any further. One of my jobs in my previous life was in test instrumentation where we used a load of this sort of sensor, eventually we binned them as they were too unreliable, the gap, ambient light and dirt being big issues (yes I know they are infra red, as were ours).

Thanks for the info Fishmanoz, but I have no need of RM. I read how it works from the data that came with my copy that I got packaged with my second hand Elite. It came up with the demo package when I installed it. I understand completely how the loco detection would work with it. So I can see how it would all work and if you only have one loco on a given circuit then you don't need to know the locos id. The system proposed is supposed to give the loco id from tags attached to the loco. So yes if you gave it to me as a project no big deal, the biggest issue is drawing on the screen with Railmaster, graphics programming is difficult and time consuming. No my issue is with the sensors. Reflective optical is what I would suspect that would do the job, or magnetic. Magnetic is out as it only gives you a there/not there signal. So optical seems the most logical. Now I am a bit out of touch, but 5 years ago I was still working and there were no sensors on the market that small. Optical is also problematic, with getting the signal right. The tags have no power to them so it looks like a printed bar code or the like.

Having read the description, has anyone any idea how the detector pads work? It doesn't mention power and the sleeper tags sort of indicate magnetic detection of some sort. unless it is optical. Anything optical would need more room.

Thanks Deepfat they are exactly my sentiments. I have never used RailMaster so I don't know how good it is, Elite does the job but is a bit dated. Hornby do make really good steam locos but I think that probably is because all the ground work was done years ago. As I have said previously, I think Hornby has the same issue as a number of businesses years ago they hired someone that could do all this stuff, but they have long gone, so support is now an issue.

Sorry missed that bit, I did ask what it was. Anyway it is probably the axle mounted gear not engaging with the motor the tolerance on this is extremely critical. On my one it looked perfectly ok but was not meshing with the motor worm drive. I messed around with it for ages before buying a new gear which fixed it.

It is probably one of three things, either the motor is not engaging with the gears properly or the valve gear or wheels are seized, or one of the gears is turning on its axle. Unfortunately, it is take the loco apart job. I did have issues recently where the motor worked but didn't have enough power to turn the wheels. What locos are we talking about? It might help as certain ones have common faults.

I didn't realise it was a two stroke diesel, yes the sound would be totally different. It is a similar comparison between a class 59 and class 66.

I have just bought a class 57 loco and was thinking of using the Hornby TTS class 47 sound decoder. Does a class 57 sound noticeably different to a class 47. I assume the horn will be the same but from what I have read it appears they changed the engine to one nearer a class 56.

Reading the definition Railcom it implies that it gives the controller the ability to read data from the decoder outside of the programming mode (correct me if I am wrong). So effectively while the locos are running round your layout the controller could read data from any one of them, rather than just the one as in programming mode. Now I don't know how good it is at doing this but it could interpret all the locos on your layout if it knew which ones you were using ( doing the whole extended address range might take too long). So I assume Railmaster keeps a list of your active locos. This could be extremely useful if you wanted to do loco detection properly. It appears that Lenz want a license fee which probably explains why Hornby haven't implemented it, Zimo have implemented it as they were party to the original discussions. I assume when DCC was originally designed there was a facility for the transmission of data to and from the decoder, all I suspect Railcom does is put a set of known commands to that facility.

After my experiences today, it could be the motor. I have been fitted a Britannia chassis into my old Morning Star. Worked perfectly ok until I resoldered the wires on the motor. It appears that the motor has a loose connection internally and it is not the first one that has failed on me. I was fixing a City of Sheffield for someone and the motor was duff on that one as well. What I normally do with a fault like yours is remove the valve gear but leave the conrods connected and see if it runs. Alternatively disconnect the motor from the gears and first check if it runs ok and then move the wheels by moving them on a flat surface to see if they run smoothly without the motor attached.

It could be a hundred and one things but my favourite for this is the valve gear has got locked. Check that the valve gear screws have not come loose, again the favourite is the centre ones which allows the "keyed" connecting rod to the valve gear to rotate when it shouldn't. Also for some reason on mine the ones on the front wheels come loose and move out to again jam the gear. Finally check the wheels are not moving on the axles. If not any of these, then check the pickups. After this it is body off and start checking the transmission. From what you say to me it sounds like "jammed" valve gear as it was working ok.