ColinB

There should be a little bag with two couplings in. Mine definitely had them. I will probably replace them with them chain, but they should be there.

Yes mine arrived this afternoon. Yes, it is very nice.

Pullmans have a different circuit. According to your last photo I saw, bridge rectifier, feeding capacitor with 5 volt regulator, so the lights remain at a constant level no matter the voltage (as long as it is above say 9 volt, about 2 volts across rectifier, 2 volts across regulator).Plus Pullmans don't have directional lighting for DC. Fishmanoz summed it up exactly.

I usually run mine with 4 coaches without any issue.

I bought the limited edition one and that definitely has a different tender as you mount the sound loudspeaker and TTS decoder in it, which you wouldn't be able to do if was the old ringfield type. Are you sure you are not getting mixed up with a Railroad version?

Yes, you are absolutely right but they rely on diodes to do it, which is great on DC but on DCC they will probably switch the headlights on when you are going backwards, which is exactly what I said. Possibly they might flash on and off, I don't know. What I do know is that Hornby fitted that socket for a reason so they must think the same as me. This is effectively the same as a Pendolino or a Javelin, in both cases I have fitted a really cheap decoder to the dummy end which again is what I recommended.

In mine it was too tall, in the end I used a loksound normal decoder. Originally I gather it was a 6 pin version rewired for 8 pin, I got out of a loco I was adding sound to for someone else. They seem to only do them in Germany, but because of the short wire and small size it fitted well.

I wonder if this will happen with the Hush Hush loco. I bet their Dealers really love them, especially as probably they have lost all credibility with their pre-order customers.This goes one of two ways either poeple won't bother pre-ordering as it is a waste of time and wait to see if they come onto the market or they will order earlier, but then some people have had their orders cancelled did exactly that.

Yes, I did read them. For me the subject is closed. Actually it did me a favour, I have one of these decoders, I bought it because it was small and I wanted it to fit into my Adams loco. Not only did it not fit, but ran very poorly in every other loco I have tried it in. Considering it was more expensive than my choice of decoder, to say the least I was very surprised. I think I also had issues changing the address on the Elite with this one. I just use it now for testing that the loco is wired up correctly, before I put an expensive sound decoder in.

It all comes down to the good old "Supply and Demand" people will charge the maximum they can get. I am into classic motorcycles. A few years ago I was horrified to find that a range of books that identify the models and changes per year, which in this country cost about £20 new, £5.00 round an autojumble for a secondhand copy, were fetching about £200 each in the US.

I have 4 of these two blue and two green. I decided to keep two of them untouched, but the other two (without boxes), I decided to add lights and DCC. I tried really hard to use the original motor, I remachined the wheels so they would go over my Peco Streamline points. After a few days trying and one dead DCC decoder, I eventually gave up and replaced the motor with a more modern Hornby class 66 one, a guy in Gloucester does the conversion. Put extra pickups on the trailing bogie and changed the wheels, it runs really well. I did the conversion on the other one myself, once I knew what to do ( I also found some better ways to do things). I must admit I didn't want to replace the motor but it is a much better loco now. I have two of the new Heljen ones, and I agree with you the old Triang one is a nicer looking model. Who makes the better pantographs?

@Kenfo I think this is the correct place to be asking those sort of questions. You are probably using them to control your locos many of which are probably Hornby. I am always getting pulled up about things I post. If you don't ask how you ever going to know. When I first started on DCC I bought loads of different decoders, a lot of the time to fit in my old Hornby converted locos, I found not only did a lot of them not work very well but quite often they blew up, although the motor currents were supposedly within their specification. So I would have found it very useful if someone had told me the truth. I have tried that decoder of your's in many of my locos and its performance has never been as good as a Horby or Zimo decoder. I don't know why they are marketted as a superior decoder, but perhaps they are meant for the person that likes playing with CVs, personally I don't. The thing I did find out about this decoder is it has motor current limiting. If the motor current is exceeded it switches off and flashes the front and back lights if they are wired up. I found out as the Hornby motor I was testing had accidentally picked up a bit of wire that was occasionally "shorting" it out.

Yes you can. I assume by blanking plate you mean the 8 pin DC header. If you want the lights to works properly you will need a decoder in the 8 pin socket, but if you are not bothered about the lights then yes leave the blanking plate in.

That is what I said, of coarse it won't damage your motor it doesn't have one. I was only stating the reason you mustn't put a DC loco on a DCC one. As I said "putting it on DCC is not going to do anything". The only thing you have to be careful about is if Hornby have wired up the lights to work on DC, then you might get the headlights on when you are going backwards.

Weird, on the latest Bachmann class 66 I bought (the one in BR blue), I didn't have to change CV150. I have had to do it on virtually every other one.

On one of my locos for some reason everytime I ran it the sound turned off after a little while, I tried about 2 other TTS decoders (merchant Navy, Class 66) all with differing software versions, each did the same. Tried the offending decoder in another loco it was perfect. In the end I tracked it to be something between the 3 TTS decoders and that particular loco. There are a few posts about it on this forum. I replaced with a expensive Zimo one, worked perfect I must admit it is the only one that has ever done it, the joke of it was that it was a factory fitted TTS, but there again if I ran it on a piece of straight track not my layout then no issues. I think it is called software, I spent years tracking down obscure bugs in my software, so I suppose with Hornby it is no different.

For some reason Triang EM2s seem to fetch stupid prices. I like the look of them and have a couple, but I don't know why they fetch so much. No, I didn't pay the stupid prices for them.

For risk of being told off, this is my personal opinion, I found that they were not as good as a lot of the other decoders. One of the issues I found was that they were very susceptical to dirty track, more so than say Hornby or Zimo, which probably also explains a bit of the jerkyness. The thing that did surprise me with all these decoders and I have tried quite a few, was how badly some of them coped with dirty track and missing DCC signals. As I say that is just my personal experience, others probably find that they are alright.

Yes exactly, I normally change the connector to 21 pin, I don't use adapters as they usually foul the roof ( I think class 66 is the only one where is doesn't). Some of my models do have the expensive ones and yes they are good but even though I complain about them, TTS decoders are really good value for money. With a decent speaker they sound OK. On the Hattons class 66 you have to fit the expensive ones to get all the light functions.

As the title of your post says it is "non motorised" so putting it on DCC is not going to do anything. Raw DCC will damage your motor as it behaves the same as AC. Basically because the motor doesn't turn the motor is in a pernament "stall" condition with no back EMF so it takes maximum current which will eventually burn it out. As a guide on new models if Hornby fit a DCC decoder socket then they expect you to fit a decoder, if it doesn't have one then they don't. If you do have to fit one what I do as it is only lights you are controlling fit a LaisDCC one at £10.00, you are not bothered how well it runs the motor.

I think someone on here mentioned it when the class 37 TTS decoder got released. I have to do it for all diesel locos except for some reason class 66 ones, even some of the Bachmann ones.

I have never used a Select but are you sure the notchy feel is not meant to be like that. I think the next generation of controllers are tending towards a box that you connect to with your phone, pad or laptop then talk to it via wireless. Do a web search and you will probably see what is around. It is the sort of thing you need to go to an exhibition to actually see the thing.

@richmarsh you must be incredibly unlucky, I complain about TTS decoders but I have never had as many issues as you are having. Are you absolutely sure there is nothing wrong with the wiring on the loco? It is not about not telling the truth it is just with holding certain bits. I must admit I always buy them from a recognised Dealer on EBay, just in case I have to send them back to Hornby. As a sideline I have an apology to make to RAF, they do have current limiting on the motor control. I have one that needs to go back as it has the back lights driver blown, so I thought I would try it in my Lima (it is a class 66 one). I thought if it dies then so what, and yes the TTS decoder seems to be current limiting in the fact the Lima keeps stopping and starting. With a complete short it dies, as I know from personal experience, but it appears if it is slightly above the current limit it just stops.

The biggest issue I found with testing the ones I converted was going round bends and pointwork. They worked ok when running over a length of straight track (or slighly curved as it was flexitack) but when I put it on the main layout I go a whole load of different issues. Things like pickups not working that well, decoders that weren't up to the job (two just died with current overload) and stalls when going over pointwork (usually back to back spacing errors). I suppose I made things worse because I decided to upgrade the front and back bogies, the front ones were not an issue, but the back one used to have one of those plastic axled things, replacing it with decent wheels on a normal axle caused no end of issues.

The good news is I ran my J15 with the J36 TTS decoder in it for two hours backward and forwards this morning just in case. I was happy that there were no issues. On this one as space is so tight I even used the original round speaker, which in this case did fit properly in the mounting supplied in the tender. It is a bit ironic that they get it right on this model but don't actually provide a proper decoder for it, but the J36 one I assume is near enough.