ColinB

It sounds like a return to Hornby for them to fix it. The barrel being open, I doubt would make much difference to the weight. I bought a brand new set of wheels for an 0-6-0 loco that didn't mesh properly, I know it is not the Rocket but it does show that sometimes there are faults. It is still under guarantee and the Hornby service appears to be very good, so contact the Hornby Customer department for a return number and I am sure that they will fix it. Even if you "over oiled" it that shouldn't stop it from working unless it got onto wheels, long term perhaps it would create gear issues. It sounds from your description that it has never worked properly.

I am amazed, you cannot get the front bogie for a Schools class as a repair item. I assume it must have been under guarantee.

Which decoder did you buy? When you mention cutting 2mm off of the pins it sounds like you bought the plug in type. For the Rocket you really need the 6 pin decoder with leads and I would go for the one made by Zimo MX617 that fits well and the barrel will shut. You have to wrap the lead around itself in the barrel. It is not unusual for the pins to be too long, I regularly cut off about 2mm to make them fit flush with the connector. As for the running, it should run ok, mine does and the one in Sams Trains did. It hasn't got much torque but it should have enough to pull the three carriages.

I agree photographing them in the box is not really on. Even when they are out of the box in the case of tankers it is difficult to see if the ladders are broken or minor details are missing. I suppose if you are not happy and the item is not extremely rare then buy from someone else. Buying secondhand is always a risk, as is Selling, I have bought a couple of locos where they were broken and you quite often wonder if the Seller knew or whether they never noticed. At the opposite extreme you sell a loco that is 30 plus years old, and someone complains that it doesn't perform like a brand new one. I must admit I take the good with the bad, generally most of my transactions are ok.

I keep all the boxes, just in case I ever have to sell them, plus they are very useful to store them in when I am not using them. I must admit in the past, I have paid stupid amounts for Wrenn boxes, but when you notice the difference in price in a second hand one with and without box, it is worth it, plus storage is easier. I must admit though, I doubt I will ever be getting rid of those. I have recently sold a lot of of my 80's Hornby stuff and the price I got didn't seem to change much whether it was boxed or unboxed. It only seems to matter if it is very rare or just a couple of years old. I use Excel to keep track of my locos, it is useful to list and assign DCC numbers.

I forgot to mention, when I was playing with mine (an old Hornby one out of Stowe) I found I got the best results at about 10 volts. Any higher than that and the oil just vaporised giving no smoke. These things did originally work although the two I had ( one in Stowe and another in a LMS Compond) never did seem to work that well.

I must admit the only way I got mine to work properly was when I rewired them to DCC. Then they get the full 12 volts plus it is easy to turn it off and on reducing the risk of distorting the loco body and burning out the heater element. As I say it is a bit of an extreme way to get smoke.

So where do you get them from and what are they called? As for the electromagnetic danger, from my information the jury is still out, I have watched many programs about people living under transmission lines and read articles in my Institute magazine but nobody has ever proved it. I think it is the 50 Hz that is the big issue. If it is the electromagnetic field then our youngsters are going to have big issues with their mobile phones in years to come.

I must admit that is what I am beginning to do, put an order in and hopefully get it when it arrives. As long as you don't put down a deposit then no real issue, it is just annoying especially if the model is over subscribed and your model shop was the one that missed out. I have been waiting two years for the blue Merchant Navy loco. I know a coach is much easier to make but it is funny how they rush these out, similarly with the Terrier because someone else was about to make them. We will probably be able to get an estimate of real release dates when we see a prototype in the magazine, it seems to be six months on from that.

It hasn't changed much. I remember as a little boy rushing off to the toy shop to buy the latest release, only to find out that it didn't arrive at the time stated in the catalogue. After a couple of months I gave up bothering. It seems they don't change. Looking at most of their new locos their release dates are about October to December 2021, from previous experience if they release them at all, they will probably be early 2022 or later. Just look at their 2020 catalogue and see how many of those locos destined for 3rd and 4th quarter got released, I know we had Covid, so I can forgive them but they rushed out the Stephensons Rocket carriages (probably, just to upset "Rails"). So what happens to those releases now? Perhaps if they focussed on what they can achieve in the required timescale it would be better. Lets face it a lot of those new models are photos of the original locos, so that probably means, they have not even started the initial development.

So what decoder do you have in it at the moment? When they changed the loco did they change the decoder?

You could try a Zimo decoder, I have found that they are slighly better at dealing with a bad DCC signal. Do your other locos have loco and tender pickups, that definitely makes a difference. I have a "Rails" Terrier so I cannot comment how good/bad they are, but I remember seeing "Sams Trains" test and in that they came out pretty good. You might consider adding "Stay alive", the DCC Concepts decoders come with it fitted in some cases. As Going Spare says, it might be worth checking if the wheels have dirt on them and that the "pickups" are working properly.

Well without being too negative, most of the release dates are sumer or October time. Seeing as Hornby has great difficulty meeting most time scales, these are probably destined for 2022. I know we have had Covid but there are an awful lot of things in the 2020 catalogue that have not been released yet. Similarly the same for the 2019 catalogue. Nice "wish list" though. I am sure the 4 and 6 wheeled carriages will be released really quickly, they seem to like doing this.

When I had the magnet in the wrong position, there was a noticable difference between forward and reverse speeds.

Are you sure it is the controller, some DCC decoders especially the TTS ones wait a while before they move off. So you instintively increase the speed because you think it is not working, so when the loco decides to moves it goes to the requested speed. Have you tried dialing up a slow speed and just waiting. Similarly, some also take a while to slow down, it is meant to simulate the dynamics of a real loco.

With mine I found it could be that the magnet is in the wrong place. I had taken the magnet out as I needed to drill a hole to take a pickup, when I put it back I got the positioning wrong. It worked but not very well. Alternatively, on the one in my HST, I found a winding had gone open circuit, again it worked but not very well.

Alessio is right, as you don't have to reverse the power feeds as by turning the loco round (in the case of the dummy car) it is getting its supply input reversed, so effectively the dummy will run backwards, which is what you want.

I have one of these that I modified. The solution is much easier than adding brass bearings. What you do is take the plastic wheels off but keep the orginal axles. Now go and buy Hornby replacement wheels of the right size (Hornby ones seem to be the only ones that work). Now pull the new wheels off their Hornby axles and push them onto the saved old axles. It is a bit of a push but they will fit. I did this with my Royal Mail Coach and my Triang EM2 where I was replacing the wheels on the dummy bogie. Much easier soloution than messing around with bearings, I tried the replacement bearing thing doing that on my other Triang EM2 and it was much more difficult as it is not that easy to get the drill square with the bogie.

Simple, the TTS is now in the tender, so unless you want a 7 way connector between loco and tender that is the only way to power the lights. As I said originally the decoder was in the loco, so lights were easy. Once I added sound and had souced the new tender bottom, I wired it as per the latest Hornby locos, decoder in the tender with a 4 way connector between loco and tender.

I have exactly the same model HST that I also converted to DCC, admittedly I converted the motor to a 5 pole, but that will not improve your stopping and starting. I converted to 5 pole as my 3 pole motor was dead and I got a good deal on a 5 pole motor. What you need to do is make the dummy bogie pickup power on both tracks. Currently unless you have modified it, it only picks up power on one side while the motor picks it up from the other side. Peter's Spares were doing upgraded "Dummy" bogies when I was playing with mine which have pickups on both wheels, but I think he has sold them all. What you could do is buy the pickups for a class 90 (Hornby X8786) and modify them, or make some of your own. It is not really worth making the power bogie pickup on both tracks, although the 5 pole motor does, as the traction tyres on one side act as extremely good insulators.

You could do what I did. Initially I fitted a decoder into the loco body, but my one didn't have tender pickups and kept stopping on points, so I bought the newer tender bottom that has the mountings for the dcc socket in it and more importantly pickups. I then rewired the loco so that the decoder is now in the tender, which I eventually changed to a TTS decoder.You can then use the original speaker. As everyone else says, if you use a small suger cube speaker it will just fit in the loco body, there is enough space to fit the decoder in the smokebox. The advantage of having the decoder in the loco is you can wire in lights and cab lights. In my case as before I did the decoder move I had wired in cab lights and loco lights, so I had to add a function decoder to the loco.

If it is the same "can" motor that is fitted into a 0-4-0 or GW panier 0-6-0, I found that their current consumption was very variable. One I tested drew more than 500 mA another one less. I know RAF96 is running one with a Hornby decoder, but when I did a "stall test" on one of mine it was drawing way above 500 mA, although I did replace that one for a better one I had.

I don't know how the decoder fits into a pug, but have you considered some of the alternative 6 pin decoders which are a lot smaller.

You didn't mention that, that might be the case. I don't know the current limit for a ZTC decoder, but I think they have decent current limiting, so rather than blowing up, which has happened to me on a number of occasions with old locos, it is probably just limiting the current which would mean the loco doesn't work properly. Try fitting a Zimo, Train o Matic or some other make with a higher current limit. Avoid Hornby ones for old locos, because they have a current limit of about 0.5 of an amp, which is ok for their modern locos, but not high enough for any of their older locos. Even some of the 0-4-0 Hornby locos draw more than 0.5 of an amp, although some people on this site get the Hornby decoder to work, but why take the chance when a higher spec decoder is virtually the same price. That is why I always fit a socket, it makes changing the decoder so much easier. If you can't get an 8 pin one to fit, use a 6 pin one. If you do fit a 6 pin socket use the DCC concepts one, they seem to be a bit more robust. On the cheaper ones it is so easy to pull the the pin out of the socket or break the wire off. The DCC concepts ones go to a PCB which makes them less likely to do that and easier to fix it if it does.

I had one in my HST in the dummy end (the one that doesn't have a motor), it ran perfectly for about 6 months, then suddenly the sound stopped working. The lights still worked and when I put it on my tester it still drove the motor. More surprising was when I switched the DCC on and off, one in every 4 or 5 goes (I could do that on my tester easily) the sound came back until I switched the DCC off. So it is not unusual, shame though, I know how annoying it is. Needless to say it got returned to Hornby.