ColinB

I might be telling people something they already know, but I split the gear on my Duchess centre wheel. It was a loco I had just bought secondhand as a non runner. Did you know that the idler gear that you buy when you buy x8849 seems to be exactly the same gear as is on the centre axle of the Duchess. I compared them both before I fitted the new one and they were exactly the same. Put the wheels back and my Duchess now runs perfectly. Correct me if I am wrong.

I have bought valve gear for a split chassis Jubilee and Royal Scot off Bachmann in the last 2 months. I was amazed that they still had parts, they even had a complete new set of wheels for a chassis I bought. They are usually a lot cheaper than that well known bidding site. My latest acquisition was a Duchess that I won on EBay. It looked a real wreck in the photos. I bought it to fix and I got it really cheap at basically what you would pay for a very ropy tender driven one. To my surprise when it arrived, I look it apart to see what I needed to do and was amazed to find a LokSound sound decoder inside. After changing the speaker which didn't seem to work, I was amazed it actually worked. It buzzes a bit, but I will check again once I have tidied up the wiring. That is what I call a real result.

I used the class 90 pickups on my HST, they worked quite well.I did trim them to fit the shortened wheelbase.

Don't what ever you do remove the brass pinion unless you have to. From my experience once they have been removed and replaced, they slip. I use silicon oil with a nozzle so it gets behind the pinion.

Initially I wired my own leds in but I eventually used this kit: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/251999154032?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649 It worked really well fitting onto chassis, so that when you remove the body, the wiring stays on the chassis. I also used the same kit for my class 90.

It it is the same as me the Edit just does not work. I think it brings up another pop up, nothing to do with this webpage.

Yes, exactly and you seriously have to worry about the gaps in rails.

I know this is a long shot but does anyone know if it possible to buy the hooks that hold the back of the tender on. It looks like it is a commercial product glued on.

Well 96RAF a lot of questions to answer. That bug has occurred about 3 times to me in programming mode in the last two years. To be quite honest I didn't consider reporting it as when it happens I just switch off the Elite and it works again. I can normally tell as I normally count how many times the relay clicks, when it goes wrong it only clicks once. The software level is the latest. Bugs like that are a devil to find but it is useful to let other users to know in case it happens to them. It is probably some timer wrap. Next time it happens I will collect all the necessary data. I have tried to program a Zimo function decoder and yes it programs it perfectly well but it will not let me read any of the values. In fact it does the same with any decoder with no motor attached. When I get round to it, I was going to try putting a resistor across the motor terminals to see if that allows me to read it. It was in no way a criticism of the Elite, I think most devices have difficulty reading decoder values with no motor load attached. Every software device has issues, generally nobody notices them. I just flag them just in case someone starts binning their Elite. As for the stay alive, as I said it is because in programming mode it pulses the track with DCC you can see it on my tester. The pulse though is unfortunately not long enough to charge up that huge capacitor. On a system where it programs at full track potential the capacitor is fully charged up so it will work. Sometimes it does work on the Elite, it depends if the capacitor is charged from before.

The Duchess is a 1980s variant with the front lights and yes there is enough room. Similarly the Flying Scotsman is the same although the motor is a tight fit. The tender to loco fitting is not that difficult either, if you stick with the brass pin, you either make your own or I have found the Royal Scot works well, as on the earlier chassis the drawbar is part of the pony truck. I have 3 versions of Duchess, Ringfield, and the two with the motor in the loco. That is why I said you need the one with the separate pony truck, the later one with the fixed pony truck you will have issues with the rear screw. Update: For the Duchess I did have to machine away about a 1 mm from the centre wheel cutout in the body, the new chassis has slightly bigger wheels.

I don't know if a lot of people are aware of this, but just in case. Did you know that some of the old Hornby loco bodies fit the latest mechanisms. I dislike having the motor in the tender on my old locos, even with 5 pole motors you still get issues from the loco skating along the track, especially if you increased the friction by adding extra pickups to the loco. So anyway I was comparing my new Duchess and Flying Scotsman locos to the old ones. Surprisingly the mounting points are the same on both of these models with earlier models. In the case of the Duchess you have to choose the variant with the separate pony truck, but it fits. Again with my old Flying Scotsman I had to smooth off the raised part number lettering on the underside of the rear of the cab for the latest mechanism to fit. I know it is not that cheap an option but for me it was a lot cheaper than buying new locos, plus I enjoy doing it. It does still leave the issue of the tender, but worse case I just depopulate the ringfield motor, as Hornby did on their original versions.

Yes it would but this is the Hornby website so some people get upset if you find fault with their gear. Since I wrote my first post I have been programming more decoders. With my Elite I can easily read Hornby, Zimo and LaisDCC decoders, that includes the sound options. It seems to have issues with the gaugemaster direct plugin 8 pin ones also in varying degrees DCC Concepts ones. I have tried a few others including Bachmann and they seem ok. Add "stay alive"/ "keep alive" (whatever you call it) and then you have issues. I think it is all to do with the programming period not being long enough the charge the capacitor in the "stay alive". Also function decoders and decoders not fitted to a motor also have issues. There also seems to be an undocumented feature (software bug) where if the Elite is left on for a while in normal mode and then switched to programming it gets it wrong. Also I have noticed that sometimes when reading it takes two clicks of the relay to read values, sometimes three. If it takes one it isn't going to work. As 96RAF says the read and write cycle are fixed by the specification, but it depends on timing functions on the decoder and what the software in the Elite does with the data.

When I was adding DCC to my rebuilt merchant navy locos, I found that the valve gear was so brittle, I put virtually all the wiring in the tender, so that the only wiring in the loco was the motor. Trouble is as you try to fit the chassis to the body you don't want to have worry about trapped wires. In my case I was so worried about trapping wires, I broke the valve gear. Probably if you want lights I found the best way to go is use a function decoder, where you can stick it to the body and connect the two wires you need to the pickups via a 2 pin connector. That way there are only 2 wires to worry about getting trapped as the others are taped to the body.

I think these type of controllers seem to make more buzz with the older motors. As has been previously said it is all to do with pulse width modulation base frequency they use. They must have their reasons for setting at the value their did, as looking at their circuit they could have made it a different frequency by just using different values for the capacitor and resistor, which wouldn't cost anymore.

When I was having issue with my HST I did a lot of experimentation. The main conclusion I came to was that it was due to the power bogie basically pushing the power car along, whereas with say a class 47 with the same motor, the power bogie is at the front. Then you have the issue of the power bogie not having enough weight on it as it is right at the back, so it has a tendency to want to rear up. I took the weight out of the dummy car and then realised it needs it, to stop it sliding along the track. A class 47 has a wider wheelbase so perhaps that is why it has more pulling power. Funny I don't notice the same issues with my Pendulino but perhaps Hornby had more time to get it right. It would be interesting to find out how well the modern Railroad HST performs.

I assume your Virgin HST is the old sort that uses the powered bogie. I also assume the motor you are talking about is a Ringfield five pole motor. I used one of those to upgrade my 1980s HST. The big issue you get is that the powered bogie is the one at the back of the loco, so it has difficulty getting traction. I found that traction tyres are critical also I added a bigger weight (Peters Spares does them). Then you have to worry about drag from the dummy unit, if you have added pickups to it that causes quite a lot of drag. To test, try removing the dummy unit, I bet it pulls a lot more coaches. I have recently bought the latest HST from Hornby that powers both bogies, I haven't tried it yet but I gather that pulls a lot more coaches, unfortunately at a very hefty price.

The ones you are looking at are the rebuilt ones "Clan line" is always one of the cheapest. There is an unrebuilt "Biggin Hill" new in the box for £695 and a Plymouth for £450. The guy that runs my local model shop used to work there and he recons he has some special edition ones that are worth considerably more ( I think he got them cheap at the time). I must admit I have two of the unrebuilt ones and they are quite nice with sprung centre wheel, but sadly I run DCC and there is no way I am going to hack them around to insulate the second motor terminal. I suppose eventually I will make my layout switchable between DCC and DC to run them.

I wasn't comparing them, I was mentioning what is fact, a Wrenn unrebuilt Merchant Navy/ BofB or West Country fetches substantially more than a Hornby. Yes, I agree a Hornby is more detailed but that is the current situation. Do a web search on a Wrenn and you will see what I mean. I don't know what they fetch now but a couple of years ago they were fetching well in excess of £400.

Bullied Pacifics seem to fetch premium second hand prices anyway and when you go to Wrenns the prices seem out of this world. Especially if it is a blue one. The unrebuilt ones seem to fetch more than the rebuilt ones although mechanically they are far simpler. I must admit though a blue unrebuilt Wrenn Bullied does look really good.

Are you sure you are not getting confused between Hornby and Oxford Mk3s. I bought both and found that the Oxford ones had as you call it the "kinetic type" whereas my Hornby Scot Rail ones were the more conventional ones with the NEW pocket on the bogie.

The answer is yes, virtually any loco can be converted although Wrenns do present a formidable challenge. I think these are relatively easy, at the moment you should have two brushes on the commutator, one will be insulated one will not. So you insulate the non insulated brush, then you have to break the connection between the brushes and the pickups and insert the DCC decoder. I am sure someone will explain it in more detail. You will need a high current decoder, so the Hornby one is out, but yes it is possible.

I must admit I have never measured the voltages on my decoders. Funny I have never really seen the point, especially as I used to be an electronic engineer, it is not as if I can fix them that easily. Generally in my experience the favourites to die are the input diodes on the input and the output circuit. If you have the right equipment and like soldering grains of sand, then you can fix the input diodes. DCC is a pulsed signal, so any measured voltages are going to be a bit dubious. I have a super expensive Fluke multimeter and even that gets it wrong. 96RAF has explained all the signals, the only thing I will add is the white, yellow and green/purple outputs are what we call "open collector" outputs which don't do anything until you "pull" them up to a voltage using a load resistor. Perhaps if you explained the fault you have, we might be able to help a lot more.

I wonder if one of those TCS ones would fit. The other thing I have done on many occasions is buy a Zimo MX617, cut the 6 pin plug off and wire it to the 8 pin plug. These come with a shorter wires so there is less issue trying to find space for the wire.

Yes a Zimo MX616N fits.

Yes IslandBoy that is the speedo, it isn't a 2.5mm nut it is the 2.5mm bolt/set screw that screws into the wheel, holding both the speedo and conrod to the wheel. I am always forgetting about these and breaking them when taking a body off. In my case not a good idea as is a devil of a job to put a new one on, if you can get one. This loco may well be DCC ready with a socket in the loco, which I assume houses a DC header/adapter. You will need a special nut runner for the nut, it is better than using long nosed pliers. I found it is better to buy a commercial 2.5mm nut runner rather than the Hornby tool, it is also harder to lose.