ColinB

No I doubt you did anything to it, it was exactly what happened to me. I think some of the early decoders weren't that good.

I thought people might find this quite interesting. One of the things that I have difficulties with is Hornby tender weights when upgrading the DCC socket position to the tender, verses the loco as in older locos. Hornby don't do the weight as a spare part. I have bought a second hand rebuilt West Country Sir Keith Park it has the DCC socket in the loco. I took the tender apart to work out how to add the socket and to my amazement it had the later Duchess tender weight in it. Obviously no wiring for the DCC. The loco looks untouched from new, so did Hornby add these weights to the later build West Countries? When they did move the DCC socket to the tender, they changed the tender top mounting points and changed the weight completely, I assume to give more room. I suppose someone could have fitted as a retrofit, Peters Spares was selling them at one point.

Not that I am an expert but weren't people reporting this as an issue with this model. I am sure I read articles about people playing with the front bogie. Before you do anything, remove the front bogie and see if it still derails. If it does then check back to back on the bogie and see if it is bouncing off the track.

96RAF did say that there were a batch that did this, well I think it was him. Was it a new one or did it come with the loco?

I bought a secondhand Hornby 0-6-0 fitted with a Hornby 0-6-0 and it did exactly the same. I was told at the time that a lot of old Hornby decoders fail like this. The decoder looks like a Hornby so perhaps it has the same fault. That looks like a Merchant Navy, the space in one of them is very limited, that is why I moved all my decoders to the tender, so perhaps it overheated. Unusual though, normally the drivers are the first to go. You could try resetting it, it might work, I also gather from posts that some of these early Hornby decoders had issues with reading CVs. If you are going to replace it, I think the Zimo has a shorter lead and is about the same price.

That is interesting. Although the sounds will be different for each steam loco, I would have thought they would have stuck to a common format, (F2 whistle and so on), obviously not.

No they didn't they came from AC Models via EBay, a Hornby parts supplier. They have weird Hornby part numbers beginning with X which implies a spare part. They had quite a lot of them, so it seems like the release of a batch they had stored somewhere. Normally you would think they came from a collector but to have the best part of 10 plus of them seems unusual, especially since they have no tenders, hence my suspicion. I just wondered. In reality it doesn't matter where they come it was purely for my own interest.

I have just picked up a Silver Link A4 plus 3 Silver A4s from EBay. They are in their original blister pack/ice block but have no tenders. The first two arrived this morning and are absolutely brand new. Seems a bit weird though to have the loco in its original partial packing but with no tender. These locos are not recent releases, so I just wondered where they must have come from? The missing tender is not a big issue, I have one that I can cycle between locos until a suitable one appears.

Have you tried Hereford Models? I just bought a Merchant Navy TTS off them, which by now should be sold out since they haven't been made for years. I just wanted the loco to make a noise, so TTS was perfect.

Ok have it your way, as to the original subject I still find that behaviour on the HM7K unacceptable.

With out being too detrimental they are a company you deal with when all else fails. I wanted a ScotRail Dapol class 68, they were out of stock everywhere else, I paid maximum recommended retail plus a bit more which is probably why they still had one. They were pretty good with postage which was really good after all the horror stories I had read, so I suppose it depends who you get in the shop. As to them not having a HM7000 as still advertising it, a lot of companies in model railway seem to do that, the worrying thing is I noticed someone in another field doing it which is worrying. I ordered a Hornby Powerbank because the site on the Supplier said they had them, only to find out they basically they were on preorder, which they didn't say. Perhaps it is because the smaller retailers have to get someone in to change their webpages.

Actually Deem is as I suggested earlier in the post. Buy the Duchess tender bottom which gives you the socket, weight and DCC socket. Now here comes the nasty bit, you need to replace the tender bottom wheel retainer on you existing tender with the relevant tender bottom wheel retainer from the latest version of your loco. This gives you a pattern where to cut the hole for the socket. Once you have cut the socket then fit the socket, there is just enough plastic to screw it down, then throw away your old weight and fit the one from the duchess tender with the socket etc. I assume your Merchant Navy is old so a new tender bottom wouldn't fit the tender top, Hornby moved the mounting posts backwards.

I never have noticed it with my HM7000 but on TTS I had one loco that would constantly lose sound, I spent about a week trying all the techniques I know to reduce noise. In the end I gave up. I eventually moved the TTS to another loco and bought a Zimo sound decoder as a replacement. Both locos worked perfectly with their respective sound decoders. I could have changed the motor in the brand new Duchess but as it was new, I didn't want to. I have a similar issue with my DigiKeijs it occasionally trips out on start up, which it didn't until I changed the firmware to the new arrangement. I mailed the guy that designed it and he explained they had put some extra protection in which was what was causing it. He had a fix to disable the check, but in the end now I know the cause so I just put up with it. I suppose I am different, we once had an issue with the engine control of a Zeta engine mainly because of the way the engine was manufactured. In the end we were told to fix it in software, as there was no way they were going to redesign the line. So I suppose I have totally different attitude. It needs sorting, as I am sure this may be one of many reasons decoders get returned. Interesting to see though if they work ok on DCC only, which could imply a binary flag is getting set improperly on power up.

I had a similar issue when I wanted to convert couplings. My initial idea was to replace the bogies then realised that the replacement bogie cost was a bit excessive. So in the end I went for a range of aftermarket couplings that you could adapt to fit your old bogies. In my case I was using magnetic ones and the supplier I chose made some really nice ones. It wasn't the normal supplier of these types of products either.

That is cheap for what it is. The one I saw was completely static, I think the wheels moved but it was on a stand. It was about £33.00 but then it was in their gift shop, so that was probably the recommended retail price. When you think about the technology must be relatively cheap as the Flying Scotsman is expensive, but not that expensive compared to Hornby's other models.

I think you will find it is all to do with a change in design of power supply. In the old days they used fixed 240 volt to 12 volt supplies, or whatever the voltage that is required. Modern ones use "switched mode power supplies" when the input waveform is chopped and passed through a circuit to give the required voltage (not my field but my friend used to design them). Generally that is why they are smaller and if not designed properly catch fire or cause electric shocks, because you have lost that electrical isolation you get from a transformer.

This fault it appears to be coming up over and over again and before everyone jumps in, there are at least 3 posts about it. The overcurrent is going to be derived from a bluetooth message from the HM7000 decoder back to the smart device because the smart device(pad or phone) is not in control of the DC power supply used to power the track. Perhaps if it is possible, could one of you guys just test it on DCC only (no HM7000 involvement) if you have a suitable DCC controller, to see if the loco actually works with the HM7000 fitted. If it does work could you please report back. It is possibly the way Hornby monitor the motor current, they are not filtering it properly as they seem to fix it by changing the motor. Trouble is the HM7000 triggers an overcurrent condition sets the flag in bluetooth so I imagine the App then sets the motor current to zero via another bletooth message back to the decoder. That is just a calculated guess from my experience with signal controlled control systems. The decoder could be doing current limiting on its own by using foldback to reduce the current to zero, but I doubt it as it would need a pretty chunky resistor on the decoder. A bigger issue is as motors get old they generate more noise, so just replacing the motor is not a solution.

It wasn't a Brio it was a cheap toy (well not really cheap) smoked and changed the light display. I must admit I wasn't that interested in it it, the woman in the gift shop said they had sold loads. Most toys have micros (usually some really cheap Pic derivative or Chinese equivalent) these days so controlling it is not that difficult.

I was at the North York Moors Railway a couple of weeks ago. Yes they were selling a model (well I think that loosely fits the item) that blows smoke, yes it is battery powered. The clever bit with Hornby is fitting in a small space.

That is the way I do it. I will add though in some cases Hornby will renumber lets say the valve gear or wheels and often the later part will fit. I am sure that lots of time the renumbered part is actually the old one just renumbered. They did that recently with X6113.

I know, but from what I heard from the Service Guys it is just a rebadged major brand. Just because I worked for them, doesn't mean everything is wonderful, the front end on the Sync is dreadful. They changed the Supplier after my vehicle was designed. PS I never worked on that system. As to the search engine perhaps Hornby would be better adopting the New Modellers Approach with possibly a "pop up" that identifies models when you select the right hand mouse button over the relevant Service Sheet.

I use the ones in the "New Modellers" website. I did try the Hornby system but it is not so easy to use. It is much easier to scan a list to find the relevant one. The big issue with "Search Engines" is they need a near match to work. Probably a bit like why my Sat Nav managed to keep driving in a circle around a junction in York last week.

I was just about to say the same. On my six wheel Peckett I spend ages finding the best setup. It came fitted with DCC but it was difficult to put the body back on, my new system not only fits better but the body fits much better. Probably the best arrangement is to buy a Next 18 socket and wire it up but having never done it on one of these I don't know if there is enough room.

Generally most of the steam ones seem the same but I must admit I don't have a hall so I don't have any practical experience.

HM7000 is a non starter it is far too big. To get the smallest profile you need to use either a 6 pin decoder or a next 18 which means rewiring the connector. HM7000 doesn't come in 6 pin and the next 18 is too big, so if you want sound I would suggest Zimo because that is the smallest one I have found in the 6 pin configuration. Wiring with 8 pins is a big issue, the 6 pin Zimo with wiring is not so bad, but the direct fit is so much better. Train O Matic ones are pretty small as well and they work well.