ColinB

I agree with howbiman, soldering a socket makes things so much easier. On a Bachmann A4, I recently converted (it was the split chassis one) there was no room to fit the 8 pin socket, so I fitted a 6 pin one. The big plus point is it easily gives you the chance to recheck that it still works on DC, by just changing the header, you also easily change decoder makes, if one doesn't work very well. I don't have a Select but I have an Elite and I have found that all the decoders I have tried with it always work. The issues I have had is when you want to change CV values or set a new address or read values, with certain decoders this does not always work reliably. So a ZTC decoder should work.

I must admit on some of my locos on EBay I got offers for less than the "start price". My "start prices" are always what I think it is worth and are generally less than the others on EBay, so when I get an offer of less than the start price, I usually just politely respond with the term "I would rather let the auction finish". I must admit EBay is good in some respects so as MR was saying a loco that has been improved and thus not in mint condition fetches less, but to the average user if the loco has been converted to say DCC or had extra pickups added, if it is done properly to the average user it is worth more than the standard one. Similarly if the loco has crew fitted then you have saved the price of fitting them yourself.

I have updated my old Hornby Phoenix class 86 to the new "railroad" chassis, motor and dummy bogie. I would like to fit some sprung buffers, especially as Hornby don't have any ordinary buffers for this loco (the new chassis didn't come with buffers). I gather that they are Oleo buffers, does anyone know the correct size?

If they are still under warranty and from reading your post you bought them from new with sound fitted, then it is a return to retailer or contact Hornby Customer services. It is not worth messing about trying to replace speakers. If you had retro fitted the TTS to the loco then checking the speaker would be a good idea but since you have not taken it apart, let Hornby do that. Don't worry, I doubt it is anything you have done to make it fail. From my experience and I have quite a few TTS decoders, they seem to fail from overheating or bad wiring, but then the whole decoder doesn't work anymore, so in your case it looks to be a manufacturing issue as you bought the model with it already fitted.

That is definitely going to be nearer the 1 amp current consumption, so that rules out the Hornby decoders. I was surfing that well known sales site yesterday and there was a link to "Train o matic" decoders they have a maximum current of 1 amp so they might be nearer your needs. Jenny Kirk's website is sponsored by them so they must be reasonable for her to put her name to supporting them. Be careful if you do a "stall test" you have to do it pretty quick as on some motors that is a sure way to burning them out, I prefer to just measure the resistance of the motor (on DC it is just resistance) and then work out the maximum current from that using ohms law. It will be higher than that obtained from a "stall test" but that is better anyway and far safer. I am always saying this, but use a socket then you can check if you have done it properly by fitting a DC header before you try the decoder.

Yes an 8 pin Bachmann socket will work, I think that they are better made than the Hornby ones anyway. I am assuming it is not a ringfield motor. Anyway once you have the socket wired in, check between pins, they should be open circuit except between pins 1 and 5, which should measure motor impedance/resistance. Check pins 4 and 8 are not connected to any other pins. Where did you get the Bachmann 8 pin, I am always on the lookout for decent 8 pin sockets.

The best way to do any DCC conversion is to wire in a socket, it makes life so much easier. I am pretty sure there is room inside a Duchess to do this, if not do what Hornby now do with their newer models, mount it in the tender. Once you have wired in the socket you can check none of the motor or function wires are connected to the pickups, that is what normally smokes the decoder. Then put a DC header in the socket to check it still runs on DC, then when you are happy fit the decoder into the socket. I do this with all my conversions, it is so easy to short the motor to pickup without realising, even Hornby have been know to do this on some models. Using the socket makes it so much easier to check.

I am amazed you got TTS to work on an old tender driven loco. The ringfield usually takes in excess of what the TTS can provide, so it keeps resetting. I tried using a class 66 one on an old Lima class 66 loco and it was terrible.

I bought the Hogwarts station which is in fact Goathland station on the North Yorks railway. Hornby do make a platform but it is far too short. So in the end I made one out of Peco Edge Pieces covered with Wills cut stone wall sheet and Wills Tarmac sheets for the actual platform. There are a ton of pictures on the web plus I regularly go on holiday around that area so I took some photos. It came out really well. In your case you just need to look at pictures of Settle or one of the other stations on the Settle Carlisle line. The Peco platform edges make a perfect edge. I will supply some photos if you are interested.

It sounds like the same issues I have with my Bachmann 4 car EMU and my old Brighton Belle. I agree with RAF96 and Chrissaf but I must admit with my layout with bridges and tunnels it is really difficult to find the space to connect them all together upside down. The only good thing I like is that you only need one DCC decoder to get all the lights working. Then of course there is the issue of not breaking any of the connectors.

Fishy to be quite honest I don't know. I know that occasionally the loco doesn't work on DC and then I suddenly remember that I have programmed an address into them. It is not the TTS ones, because I know that they are generally DC disabled. I am pretty sure they were Gaugemaster and DCC Concepts ones. Now I am getting near to completing my railway and starting to give all my locos different addresses (currently many are at default value of 3), I will do some more checking.

To be quite honest, I thought like you initially, but I have found the old Triang couplings are far more reliable than the NEM ones I currently have. I was considering converting them to the "Hunt" type magnetic ones.

I finally bought the Hornby class 87 "Sir Winston Churchill" VIrgin trains loco. I was not disappointed, it is a wonderful model.

I found choice of decoder was really important on old locos. New locos with decent pickups and efficient motors you can use virtually anything. On my old Limas I added an extra pickup to the dummy bogie and used Zimo decoders that seemed to make them work a lot better. I have no association with Zimo, but I have noticed they seem to work much better that a lot of the others with a less than perfect DCC signal.

Thanks Fishmanoz. On virtually all the locos I have changed the address on, DC does not work anymore, that is on lots of different decoders. I must admit I have not checked all of them but the few I have tried that is what seems to happen. I just assumed that was what happened, I will read out CV29 next time. Generally it is not an issue as the only time I use DC is to check out a faulty mechanism.

Generally most of the decoders I have reprogrammed to a new address other than 3, don't work on DC any more, only working on DCC. So I would say RAF96 is right, something has gone wrong during the reprogramming.

Yes, RDS all my Bachmann class 66s have a TTS decoder and I was going to do the same with the Hattons one. I noticed on the one I bought initially that even with the 6 function decoder I could not get the cab lights to work. So I read the data that came with it and it doesn't mention anything about a 10 function decoder. I didn't even know there was such a thing until I watched that YouTube video. As I say I spent ages trying to find an ordinary 10 function decoder to fit into the two I bought in Hattons sale, so I eventually went with the LokSound option purely because that was the only way I could get the 10 function option. I normally get my decoders from Zimo if they are not TTS, so I don't know a lot about LokSound products. Even when you do buy the one for the Hattons class 66, you have to be careful you select the right variant it is not that obvious. I don't even think the Hattons standard decoders cover the 10 function option.

If it is a twin worm drive loco you are going to need a higher current decoder than the current Hornby ones. I did the conversion on my Triang EM2, I even skimmed the wheels so that they would negotiate modern points. The conversion is pretty easy but I had issues with the plastic insulators going brittle and shorting out the decoder. In the end I converted the motor to take a current class 66 motor but used the original Triang bogie. It is worth adding pickups to the dummy boggie.

I agree entirely with the rest. You could phone or email Hornby to see whether they will just fix the loco, rather than having to send the whole lot back. As RAF96 says is probably the tolerance on the gear-train is not right, so it is slipping. It did it on one of my old 0-6-0s.

As I have said before it is like trading your two year old car from new, back to the main Dealer or your classic bike to a classic bike Dealer. As the adage says "no pain no gain", so listing them on EBay is a pain and they take their cut, but the rewards can be great. That is why EBay is so popular. Ok there is 5% of the polulation that are a pain but most are ok. I recently put up an old tender driven Princess Elizabeth loco that I wanted £30.00 for, it sold for well over £50. So as long as you list the stuff for what you actually want, then even if you get the "wasters" buy it, hopefully the profits from the other items will ease the pain. That is the way I look at it. Remember the major retailers didn't get rich, by being a charity.

@Fishmanoz in this case a measurement of the stall current doen't help. I must admit I do a stall test on my old locos and measure the armature resistance to get absolute maximum value but in my Duchess case it was well within specification for a TTS decoder. As it was bought new with the TTS decoder fitted by Hornby. No, this fault is an odd dynamic one, I have read a couple of posts on this forum identifying the same fault. It is a weird dynamic fault with how their system works, I don't know what is actually happening but RAF96 did mention that it might be the sound part having some cut off due to it thinking it is sourcing too much current. What I do know is that I checked the software version on the 3 that I tested and they ranged from early versions to the the class 66 one which was the latest.As I say took the offending TTS decoder out put it into another Hornby loco and it didn't miss a beat. I put a Zimo sound decoder in the problem loco and that works perfectly. What I should have done is changed the motor to see if the fault disappeared but I didn'twant the agro and the risk of breaking something.

Yes RAF96 you are absolutely right, as I had a broken class 66 TTS decoder that had one function/port broken and I knew it going back to Hornby anyway I tested it on a Lima class 66 loco. Sure enough every so often the loco stopped because of the overload protection (I know it was that as when I replaced it with a normal decoder with a higher current limit it worked perfectly). The reason it had a function/port blown was there was a fault with the lights I fitted, so yes I agree no protection on those. There does appear to be some arbitary overload protection on the sound though, which causes the effect that this post is about. When my Duchess did exactly the same as this post I spent a week trying all sorts of things to stop it happening but as I said I could not fix it, but it only happens with certain locos. So I don't know if it is noise on the "back emf" measured that causes an issue, but it seems to be something unique with the motor. Take the TTS decoder out of the loco put it into another loco and no issues. Perhaps if you are ever talking to your mates in Hornby you could ask if they have ever noticed it. I doubt Customer Services are ever going to be able to answer a question like that.

I had this issue with a Duchess TTS and that was a factory fitted TTS. I tried everything to stop it, in the end I came to the conclusion that there was some weird reaction between the TTS and the motor. I had two other spare decoders (class 66 and Merchant Navy) and they did the same with the same loco. The only thing I thought it could be is that the TTS sees a surge in current and shuts down the sound, but doesn't have any logic to switch it back on again. It didn't even seem to be related to speed it just happened sometimes after one circuit, sometimes more. In the end I used a Zimo sound decoder in the offending loco and moved the TTS to another loco, where it worked perfectly. So you are probably right. I had a similar setup as you HST with 5 pole ringfield motor, I also has "stay alive" fitted. The TTS worked perfectly for 6 months but then died. So they should work ok, I am pretty sure it died because I had "Heat Shrinked" the circuit and it was very hot in the loft on that day.

An important point, make sure your controller is a reasonably modern type, not an old H&M type, or early Triang type. These controllers don't have very good regulated outputs with high voltages which can damage the DCC decoders. If it is a decent regulated type driven by electronics rather then no issue.

To get all the lights to work properly on these you need a 10 function decoder. I only found out by watching a YouTube video complaining about them. Rog is probably right dependant on the type of adapter in that you have to add links on some adapter boards, but I don't know if the lights will work as you want them. LokSound seem to be the only ones doing a 10 function decoder, I only found out after I bought the expensive sound option, because that was the only decoder I could find that did 10 functions. I only found out they did an ordinary decoder with 10 functions from reading the Hornby Mag advertisements last night. It is about £30.00. If you want the sound option, I got mine off CoastalDCC, they were substantially cheaper than anyone else and their's is pretty good. Originally I was going to fit a TTS decoder until I found out about all the light functions. I have to admit with the proper decoder they do work well (cab lights come on until the loco moves).