ColinB

Yes, mine came with the same template. Originally I bought some code 75 to code 100 converters, but I found they won't work because where the two bits of rail join on the converter is where you need to strip back the sleepers for the piece of rail to fit the deck. I just bought code 75 track for the loco shed outlets and will use a piece of code 75 track along with a converter track for the outlet to the main track. I suppose if you have got some really old locos the code 75 track may be an issue.

Yes RAF96 thank you for the circuit. It is the bit where the Microprocessor samples the back EMF that is the unknown. I assume it must somehow feed it back into the analogue to digital converter on the micro to do the closed loop control. As I say a task for when I am bored.

I must admit I have not looked for a Service Sheet but have been trawling the spares sites for bogies etc. to update my old HSTs and have found that there aren't a great deal of spares available. I assume you can get the motors as they probably share those with other models, but the rest seem hard to come by.

Someone else had the idea of using two decoders, one TTS and one normal. I did have a think about this at the time and did wonder if you connected the TTS one to the motor via say two 10 kiloohm resistors, so that basically the TTS was just monitoring the back emf whether it would work. Trouble is without knowing what the circuits and the strategy inside the TTS are, it is hard to say whether it would. Perhaps one day I will have a play.

Mine didn't come with any spare parts, but perhaps that was a a "cost save". Did your's come with the hut on the turnatable and you have removed it ? Oh, i have read it again, you have not added it. On mine it came with it glued on.

The other thing to remember is you must keep the deck clean, it uses a track moulded into for it to work. I thought long and hard about buying one, it is a lot of money but I must admit I am very happy with it.

Yes, I have one of these. The indexing is brilliant. I used to have an old Triang one but I was always having issues with the motor and one day while I was trying to fix it, it fell off the table and disintegrated. I looked around for a suitable replacement. Not only was the Hornby one expensive second hand (they weren't doing them new at the time) when I asked around it appears it is a bit noisy, which was one of the major issues with the Triang one. This site is meant for discussion so I see no issue in giving advice on a Heljan product. I found out that the Heljan was not only incredibly quiet, but it also uses software to get the indexing right. I control mine with DCC and it is brilliant. The only issue I have found with it is placing the outlets and powering them, where the Hornby scores better. It is also all setup for DCC.

You are absolutely right RAF96, two of my DMUs have Zimo sound decoders specially designed for them and yes you hear the gear changes on the "Bubble car" which I gather was their characteristic, but they were substantially more than a TTS decoder. Nice units though. I have just fitted an A4 TTS decoder to an old tender driven Sir Nigel Gresley and yes the chuff noise is not properly synchronised but when the loco is on the other side of the layout does it matter. It was a spare unit anyway, I bought it to fit into an old Bachmann split chassis A4 until I did a stall test and found its maximum current was in excess of 500 milliamps. I paid not much more for that TTS decoder than if I had bought a normal decoder, so even though I often complain about them, they are really good value (anyway Hornby have replaced all my duff ones). The Sir Nigel Gresley has been replaced with a 5 pole pole motor hence why it works with TTS.

The biggest issues I found with the Ringfield in the HST, was it only picks up power on one side of the front bogie and the other side of the rear bogie. Getting the non driven bogie to pick up power on both sides improved things substantially, adding pickups to the driven wheels gear side doesn't help much because of the traction tyres. In my case I managed to source a 5 pole bogie, and a dummy bogie off of a later HST which seemed a much better solution. Even with a CD motor you still have the issues of traction tyres, pickups and those horrible geared wheels.

It is funny that is what happened to my HST, running quite happily for 6 months then did exactly that. Initially I thought is was because I had it running a Ringfield 5 pole motor and the current was too much, but having got a replacement, I rechecked the motor current. The motor current is well within the limits of the decoder, even when stalled. The only other thing I wondered was if it had overheated, I did put it in a heatshink sleeve to stop it shorting out. The even funnier thing was while I was waiting to return it because of Covid issues, the TTS decoder in the dummy loco suddenly developed an even more obscure fault where it would power up without sound most of the time. Fortunately, Hornby replaced both of them.

atom3624 I wondered that as well whether one of their customers sold their one back to them. It is still not on. Now that all the Retailers sell Hornby new releases at the same price, the choice is which one you like when you place your order. So their stunt is not that good for future business. I used to like Rails as they had never let me down, but now if it is not Hornby then basically it is the one that does the best service. What would be really good is to find out who did get this loco for the proper price and where they did their advance order, not including Hornby.

If it is metric it is probably going to be m2 or m2.5, unless it is a self tapping screw. Those seem to be the screws Hornby favour.

I hate to say it Chrissaf, but you must have been very lucky. On my Stanier Duchess, no matter how I put the Dovetail in, it eventually falls out. It may be that on that model perhaps the fitting is worn, I did buy the loco secondhand. I did find that one particular make seemed to have bigger dovetails.

SteveM6 I must admit that is the philosophy I am tending to adopt.I wanted a new type class 87 and yes I got it off TMC at 25% off. Yes, some of the Rails ones you do have to give them a deposit, it is only their own commissioned ones though, Dapol and Bachmann ones they don't ask for a deposit.

Thanks SteveM6, I didn't know that. I noticed that the Retailer in question that started all this is charging the maximum recomended retail for Oliver Cromwell. I know that has not gone up as I have just bought one from TMC with the normal 10% discount.

I don't know, I am always a bit worried about this. With Rails, Hattons and Hornby when you pay, they take your Credit card details ready for when they want to collect the money at a later date, same with PayPal. Trouble is some Retailers sites are set up to take the money immediately. So effectively you pay for the model in full, which is bad news if you have to wait 3 years for it to be delivered. Others take a 50% deposit, again not nice especially like with one of my orders where it appears they didn't get a big enough allocation. I am now in the position of when I pre order a loco, not only do I have to check whether they are going to take the money immediately but also whether they will actually supply it. I hate having to do it, but I am at the point that if I really want the loco, I order it off Hornby directly and accept that it will be 10% more expensive.

The trouble is Hornby are part of the problem, they know they are only going to produce 500 (it says in the new releases the same), so they should limit the pre orders to say 450, including the ones they have pre ordered on their site. That leaves 50 for them to sell on their site or do what they want to do with them. I get the opinion that they just take pre orders from the Retailers without any sort of limit. So of course they would not be able to fulfil them all. In the case of the Stephenson's Rocket Carriage, I had one of my orders from Hattons cancelled as Hornby cut their allocation, but I eventually bought one off the Hornby website after they came out. So they are telling their Retailers they don't have enough, but then sell them on their website. I doubt it will happen but long term people won't bother doing preordering if it becomes a lottery. I would doubt after reading this, whether many Retailers will be justified in taking a deposit.

To me it sounds like the non volatile memory in the decoder has got corrupted, it might even be damaged. Perhaps using a 4 digit address makes it write the value in a different part of the memory so effectively fixes the issue. You have reset the decoder, so that should reset the memory. I suppose you could try it on a length of track and see if the fault is still there, that would rule out any unwanted voltage spikes on you layout.

Even if it was discounted, which it isn't, that is the same price they are charging on EBay. They are also more expensive than the other Seller on EBay. Jenny Kirk summed it up, she said Hornby should have made a batch of 700 or a 1000, then Hornby would have got the profit, instead of scammers. It is great making something rare, but all it does is create this situation. Surprisingly, I have a few limited editions from the eighties, when I sold them on EBay I didn't get anymore than for a standard model.

This is probably not the thing to say on this site but my experience is only use Hornby DCC decoders (TTS decoders included) on modern Hornby Locos (even with 0-4-0 locos sometimes there are issues) and modern Bachmann ones. Most of the older locos draw too much current. Actually the Zimo is cheaper or about the same RRP as a Hornby one, it is just most retailers sell them at a discount. The Train O Matic ones seem to work ok with older locos as well.

When I have returned my TTS decoders under warranty it takes at least a week to get a return number, sometimes at the moment even longer. They do get round to it eventually. I must admit in my case, I am happy that they were going to fix/replace them. Just lately though, once you have the return number and have sent it to Hornby their turnround time is quite fast.

I think there was also a bit of PCB I think. The wire as you said was connected via a collar. The whole lot fell apart on mine. Trouble is I noticed on both locos they were fitted to, there was a slight distortion of the loco body.

This is probably of no use but I have a huge bag of those DC headers. When I convert a loco to DCC, it is cheaper to buy the socket and header, rather than the socket alone, so I always have the header left. They also charge stupid prices for those headers.

On some locos, especially it seems with the ones with sound, you do hear a slight buzz when it is programmed. I think RAF96 has mentioned the reasons for this in the past. I think sometimes if you have lights fitted they flash. With the Elite you have the ability to read back what is programmed, so that is what I always do. Surprisingly on the Elite the programming don't always work, sometimes it is because it is not sitting on the track properly and I hate to say it but sometimes the Elite seems just gets it wrong.

I know this is a bit after the event, but because in the past I have had lots of issues with decoders. One of the first things I do before I run a DCC based loco is put it on the programming track and try and read either its address or the Manufacturer Id. Now I know it doesn't work with modules that have "Stay Alive" but on all Hornby and Zimo decoders it works. If you don't read anything then that means you might have an issue.