ColinB

There was article in one of the "on line" news pages just after Christmas saying that the cost of Shipping had gone up considerably. Plus there is the point that the cost of living in China is rising, plus the raw materials. Hornby don't manufacture large numbers of one product, so production will be expensive. China is really cheap where you are making millions of a product. Then you have to add in that 10% failure rate is accepted by the Chinese as normal. That is probably why the cost of the locos keep rising, although I must admit from my point of view they are probably getting near to the affordable limit. I did read also that some smaller firms were pulling their production back to the UK, as the China dream of cheap rates didn't always materialise. Hornby though are too far down that road, so all they can do is increase the price and hope people will still buy their product. Just remember one human rights trade embargo and your business is up in smoke.

Great, thank you. I have just logged in.

I assume you are talking about Hogsmead signal box. I have the old one and on my layout it looks perfectly ok, it fact it looks really good. Normally the way to check is to put a man up against the door.

From my days working for a really small firm, usually the most expensive parts of any piece of equipment are the switches, box and display. So they don't even need to repair the boards, just replace the main board with a new one. I know what you mean though, it is probably too much effort to refurb them.

It picks up the power via the axles on this loco. On the trailing bogie the wheels are held in by a metal holder that clips into the plastic bogie frame. If you look at this metal holder there rectangular pieces of metal standing up, the blade connector pushes on to one of these. See photo. On my one I used HST pickups on the trailing bogie, so that it picks up power from both wheels.

Hopefully when life gets back to normal, reality will begin to grip Hornby. This year sees a lot of models people want, I am not sure that they will be able to continue that for ever. There are only so many repainted and renumbered locos that people want. I was comparing the previous Princess Elizabeth model with the retooled current one ( I got it cheap off Amazon) and yes the new one is much better, but not that much better. The important thing is that they redesigned the front bogie which stops it derailing over points, so all I did was retrofit all my old ones with the new bogie ( you do need to drill a new hole and in my case tap it).

I assume Lendons has a tame Electronics person that can do this sort of thing. We had a guy at work that could desolder a 160 pin package and hand solder a replacement. I imagine with Hornby if it is not a quick fix then it is economically nonviable. I spent about a week trying to figure out what was wrong with someone's loco the other week. Fortunately for the owner, I don't charge for my labour, or else it would have been cheaper to buy two new ones from Hornby. As it was, it worked out that somebody previously had glued the wheel based gear back together badly, which explained the jerky running. If I had replaced the wheels first it would have saved a lot of time. So probably if they can't fix it in a hour or two then it is deemed not fixable. Where they go wrong, is not to offer you a new one at say half price or a discount, like the sound decoder manufacturers do with their products.

From what you say it is nothing to do with you fitting a DCC decoder, and incidentally it makes no difference to running as to which way round the decoder is inserted. It only means it will run backwards when supposedly going forwards, and forwards when going backwards. The only time it is important is if you have lights fitted, they won't work if you have the decoder in the wrong way round. From what you describe it sounds like either the motor has got stuck or more probably the valve has got locked. Check the clearances between the con rod screws and the valve gear. So look around the valve gear and wheels to check nothing is stuck. Be very careful the valve gear on these is very flimsy and breaks quite easily. Also check the copper pickups and check one hasn't got wedged in the wheel. If you are comfortable doing it, it may be an idea to remove the motor and see if the wheels move freely. Alternatively, give it to a model shop to fix. From what you say, it is nothing to do with fitting DCC. Looking at the web it looks like it is a reasonably old loco as the decoder is in the loco, on the new ones it is in the tender, so it might just need freeing up.

I will say nothing more, as I said give it to Lendons to see if they can fix it. As to removing SMD devices, surprisingly there are people that can do it. I know several people that can do it and yes you use a heat gun very carefully. Incidentally what kit do you use? I have a MPLAB IC3 which is a background debug device and is used to step through programs on virtually any PIC device. It can also upload data and reprogram the device.

Incidentally if you want to know how to remove those small chips, what you do is use a heat gun over the chip to melt the solder. The way we used to do it then was to use a small sucker tool to pull it off. When I did it with the input diodes on a Loksound unit, the sucker was too big, so I heated the area around the chip and then flipped it off with a small screwdriver. Putting it back is the big issue, I equated it to soldering sand.

If the processor was at fault then nothing would work. I am assuming that you can still run trains on DCC. It may be that the output port which drives the programming has a fault on it, so either the port has blown or it might be that there is a soldered connection that is not made. Have you thought of sending it to Lendons, they advertise that they can fix these things. Now if you have the know how and Hornby haven't locked their code, which I doubt. If you know a PIC expert they can probably read the code but you probably don't need to. You can reprogram these these things over USB so it is possible to just reprogram a new MCU with the new code with the upgrade code, if Hornby use the native bootloader (it is native to most PICs). Talk to Lendons, I suspect they might be able to fix it. Hornby probably didn't think it was worth fixing. The MCU is going to be a PIC I suspect, Hornby don't make enough to use anything else.

Ok, I will do that, unfortunately it doesn't happen that often. 55 is one quarter of 220 so I don't know if it is somehow shifting the value. That still doesn't explain the shortened read and write cycle.

Thank you that explains a lot, I just couldn't understand how the motor would be so far out. Now I know, I will go and measure the other two chassis I bought.

Has anyone else noticed that every so often the Elite programs the address wrongly. I initially thought it was me but I noticed it do it today. It seems to happen if the Elite has been on for a long time. I have a loco with a Zimo decoder in it, I tried to program the address to 220, but every time I read the address back it had programmed 55. I did it a couple of times with the same result. I also noticed it programmed it quicker, I normally count the clicks coming from the Elite. Turn the Elite off, repower it and the write function works perfectly. It is not a big issue, now I know it does it every so often but it is a bit weird. Yes, my unit has the latest software before someone asks. When it does it properly I think it takes two clicks to write it and 3 to read it. When it gets it wrong, it does the write and read both with one click.

That is not going to last then. The motor industry got hauled over the coals for doing just that.

You have probably got oil on the pickups or the backs of the wheels. Just go round the backs of the wheels with a cotton bud. You would have to be extremely unlucky to get it in to the motor, from looking at my 0-6-0 that is a long way for it to drip. More likely the pickups. The pickups on these also seem to have a habit of "pinging" off the wheels, they only seem to just touch on the top of the wheels.

I recently acquired a Royal Scot on EBay, R2633 "Planet". It supposedly just had a con rod screw missing. I replaced the con rod screw but to my surprise when I ran it the motor didn't mesh with the gear. After a lot of changing parts (motor gears, wheels), I came to the conclusion that there was something very wrong with the motor holder or the chassis. Anyway the chassis was a bit like metallised chewing gum, so I suspected it had succumbed to the rot, this was further endorsed when the motor holder disintegrated when I tried to file it. Fast forward and there is a guy on EBay selling chassis fairly cheaply (I don't think he knew that they were like hens teeth), so I bought 3, in the hope one was ok. To my surprise the one that looked the best and had a motor holder, fitted perfectly, except the height of the motor mounting was reduced by about 1 mm. In my case this was perfect as the motor ( a new one) now meshes properly with the gears. The loco now runs properly. Firstly, did Hornby change the design to make the motor sit lower or is it that when the Mazan rots it expands enough to cause a 1mm difference. The new part had a machined flat where the motor holder sat, the other one was just a raw painted casting as are the other two I bought. I also changed the design of the motor retainer so it sits better and puts less stress on the post.

I for one have never said it was Hatton's fault, when they get an allocation they deliver. We all know where the fault lies. Some people seem to think Hattons over ordered, I doubt it otherwise why would have put up "sold on preorder" banners. Hornby management have probably been on a management course as to how to maximise resources, our management from time to time did. It usually ends in tears as reality strikes. 2022 could be a very interesting year for Hornby.

I am pretty sure Hattons actually did this, as if you had looked at their site shortly after the catalogue got released they had "sold out on preorder" banners. So there must be a difference in the allocation promised and the actual number available, As someone said before, I suspect that there were production issues.

Yes 96RAF the trouble with the tenders not only with this model, is a lot of them you have to pull the back back to release the hook that holds the top on. This usually wipes out the vacuum pipe and sometimes the ladder. If the tender is the same as my ones, it is held on by a small hook at the front and either a central screw or two screws one either side, so not quite so bad. Oh and then there are the issues of relocating the water control (I think that is what it is, it is a long shaft) and the two front handrails when you refit it.

They don't tend to lock them on that site. Mind you I got a warning today when one of the administrators misread my post. I was actually saying that on this site it probably would have got locked. Fortunately when I pointed out what I had actually said it was revoked. I must admit, unusually for me, that really this subject has been flogged to death. What might be interesting is what that particular firm is going to do about it. They must have lost tons of pre-orders and probably next year it will be even worse as people drift to other model shops that do get an allocation. I find that once a model has been released that particular company is not doing the best price, plus I tend to like to use Bure Valley a lot as I know the profits go to keep that line going. So basically I only tend to buy their "own" products.

I have several of these not the gold plated version, but just the ordinary version. Really nice model that in my case goes well. Your one is the later version so the DCC socket should already be in the tender which makes life a lot easier (I converted all mine) especially as the valve gear on these is very fragile so don't touch the loco unless you have to. The part I think 96RAF refers to is the speedo drive, I have broke many by forgetting to disconnect it off the rear conrod nut. I did buy Hornby's latest version and noticed that they had stopped adding it, so I suspect that they found it to be a pain. As I said nice model that is super reliable. I think you can still get the gold plated wheels, so buy a pair and fit them if you get fed up with running it.

It would be interesting to know which pre-orders have got cancelled, although I must admit I am having difficulty remembering which ones of mine got cancelled. I had R3835 Sun Castle cancelled, R3843 W1 and I am sure one other, but I cannot remember which one that was.

Yes, the coal goes back in. I had a bit of an issue with my one where it kept blowing up decoders. I eventually traced it to an over soldered motor connection that was touching a wheel when it went round bends, so I got through two decoders. The Hornby and the Zimo 8 pin ones both fit, in fact it is probably one of the best fitments if you know about the coal coming out. I really wish Oxford would put it in the instructions like Bachmann do.

I can only comment on my experience, I use either Hornby Elite or a Fleishmann Two track controller (for my main layout). Most of the decoders work fine, it is when you have to program them that issues arise. From my experience Hornby decoders (TTS and normal) seem to be perfectly ok as are Zimo ones. I have a list of the ones that are not, generally they fail when trying to write the address, or they are not that reliable at doing it. Surprisingly the LaisDCC also seem to work perfectly well, seeing as they are very cheap. The only issue I have with these is their performance with intermittent DCC signals, but quite a lot of the others suffer from this as well.