ColinB

I am thinking of buying a second hand Hornby Class 50 loco, probably a Network South East Variety. So it will be the new tooled version not the one derived from the Lima one. I run DCC so it means I will have to take the body off to fit the decoder. Does anyone know if they all have those "dodgy" connectors that I see so many posts about.

I would be very careful with your Cheshire smoke generator, I had them fitted to two locos of that era both 4-4-0 (Hornby seem to fit it to those). When I did a study of their bodies I noticed that they are warped ever so slightly. Needless to say I have now removed them. I did put them in my old Ringfield based Duchess locos, where they are mounted on a metal chassis (where it can dissapate the heat) and under DCC control, so it is a bit easier to control when they are on or off. @RAF96 That looks really good, thank you for sharing. The only thing that would worry me is you still have the same issue, loco bodies getting hot and distorting. I have found even steam can distort a body. On the Duchess ones I modified, I did coat the inside under the chimney with tin foil to hopefully spred the heat.

If you want to go the relay option, you can buy ready made relay boards off that popular auction site for not much more than buying the individual components, especially if you don't mind buying it from China (don't worry they make these quite well). You can get them 8 to a board. So this will do 4 points. The issue with the Hornby accessory module is it gets its power off the DCC bus, so if you are driving something like a Peco point motor that requires greater than 2 amps, I suspect you are a bit limited.

As I have said before change cv150 to a value of one, it will be set at 0 on a new decoder. That will fix it. It has on all my class 37, class 47 and class 66 locos that I have fitted TTS to. You might need to use your Elite to do it, it depends on your software level for the Select to do it.

I did read on one of the continental decoder controllers manufacturers website that some people on the continent were thinking of using a CAN bus for controlling the accessories. It is proberbly more suited for this, but perhaps that is one for the future.

I think CV 150 in the TTS decoder selects a different motor lookup or algorithm. I assume CV150 = 0 is for steam based locos, whereas CV150 = 1 is for diesels, seeing on every disel I have fitted TTS to (Bachmann, Hornby, Heljen), I have to change CV150. Obviously the motor map is one of the things that you would think Hornby would change when they load the sound map, as they know what the sound map applies to, saving all these posts. I just assume that it must be in a different part of the code so not that easy to change.

You have to change cv150 to a value of 1. One of the other guys will tell you why.

8 pin dc header on EBay if you want one https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LaisDcc-8-Pin-Blanking-plate-DCC-DC-Part-No-890098/224025775899?epid=1476488745&hash=item3428fa0f1b:g:thEAAOSwXOBbhYnP

@Anry Man I did wonder about that email as well, but I let it go. I hate to say it, but has anyone looked at these profits as a percentage of turnover? We could only find figures for 2018 at a quick surf in the pub, but they definitely turn over a lot of money (in 2018 with a big loss). As I have said previously many of us are on this site to get information and to enpart information. As to the other post that people at Hornby get upset at the negative posts, I doubt it, I used to work for a company that regularly got bad press even though it was often wrong, you just accept it and move on The thing that is a bit worrying is at the moment is I am thnking of buying a new diesel, the choice is a Hornby class 50 or a Bachmann class 66, one I know has quality issues and is £40.00 more expensive than the other. As I said in my previous mails I suspect that profit came from non related railway items (paints, models etc.).

It is amazing with these so called repairers. I recently fixed somebody's loco that had supposedly been repaired by a "qualified repairer", the person asked me to fix it in desperation. The thing I have noticed is that they seem obsessed with using epoxy resin for everything when with a bit of thought, you can come up with a decent engineering solution. When I converted my 3 rail to two rail loco, I used the equivalent Wrenn parts, the issue you get with front bogies and pony trucks is that the original Hornby Dublo ones were not designed with electrical isolation in mind, so quite often the new isulated wheels touch the frame and cause shorts. To be quite honest you are only going to lose postage and packing, so do each bit a bit at a time and then not only do you save money but you will find what is the part that is causing the issue. The biggest issues I had with the conversion was the pickups. I used the Wrenn ones, but it meant drilling and tapping holes to take the new Wrenn pickup plate and plastic retainer. The tender on the Duchess even with insulated wheels caused issues when going round bends so I eventually had to put a layer of insulated in.

He didn't say, he also didn't say whether he blew up the other 3 decoders. If the green wire was shorted to track, they would all be dead.

As I have found with my classic bikes, rubber is not what it used to be. According to the motocycle sellers they use plastic in the rubber, how I do not know, but it means the rubber seems to last only about 2 years. As to tender driven locos, I hate them, I still have a few I converted to DCC. They seem to run tons better if you put in extra pickups. It took me ages to get the locos to not slide on its wheels, it appears any slight fault with the valve gear and the wheels don't turn properly and of course adding extra pickups doesn't help. I suppose it is a bit like pushing a carriage in front of the loco all the time. If I can I try wherever possible to avoid locos with traction tyres, so in the case of diesels that usually means buying from some other manufacturer.

I used to have this issue with my old Hornby ringfield motored locos, I found it is was due to the back to back measurement on the wheels and the thickness of the wheels, but your's is a modern one so I doubt it is either of these. Back to back may be the issue, that definitely on my locos "clumped" the points often changing them, you can normally hear it. As someone said sometimes it is the front bogie floating about, in which case as someone also said adding a small spring seems to cure it. I noticed on Hornby's latest Princess Elizabeth class that was one of the differences between the "retooled" one and the previous version.

I think they did do another batch of class 37s, because they ran out and then became available again. The big issue is Hornby order them in batches according to RAF96 it seems it is 2000, so once they have ran out they don't want to do a new run that they might not sell. Rails must have had a pile of class 66 ones as they were doing a deal on them about a week ago.

I hope you haven't blown up all three. Ok, do a continuity check between the green wire and the track with no power connected. Check that the green wire is actually connected to something, also check the resistance value of that resistor yhat was very hot. Does it still work on DC ?

On my Duchesses I managed to get hold of the later tender bottom which has the cutout for the 4 pin socket. I then rewired it so that the DCC socket was in the tender and it had the later 4 wire connector, getting rid of of the finger connections. Sadly I think the tender bottoms don't seem to be around now.

I can't see anywhere on a decoder that you would get 42 volts. DCC is about 18 volts if I remember, I did check the specification but I couldn't find it. Even if it was measured peak to peak that makes it 21 volts plus or minus, which is way out. As I say the only way I could see you would get that voltage is if you measured some noise spike.

I have great difficulty understanding how you got 42 volts DC, unless you got some capacitor voltage doubling effect. I think the max voltage for DCC is 18 volts, but I am not certain on that. The first question is did you smell smoke and the second is does the loco sit on the track without causing a short ( the controller trips out). If neither of these two has happened you might be lucky, normally from my experience and I have had a few die on me, you normally get those two effects, normally the bridge rectifier diodes fry themselves and eventually cause a short circuit. First thing to do is go back to dc ( I bet you didn't use a socket, that is why I always suggest using one) and see if the loco still works without the decoder. To me it sounds like something is wrong with your DCC controller, but I find that hard to believe.

Sorry, I thought "DCC Ready" was the modern standard, yes if I had bought it 5 years ago then perhaps not. Currently the only mainline locos Hornby do that aren't DCC ready are their 0-4-0s. I must admit I looked at it and thought if was the normal Loco, missing one carriage, hence why I thought it was a bargain. A lot of the people buying this will be thinking like me, the HST variants they produced last Christmas had one DCC socket, they had cost reduced by not including one in the dummy. So let us think about the child that had a "Select set" bought for them last year and suddenly finds his new lastest set isn't up to the latest specification. One upset customer. As for they are easy to convert, one look at the posts on this website, to someone like you surely it is obviously that not everyone can do that.

@RAF96 that is a Duchess/ Princess Elizabeth tender speaker fitting, that is one of the few where the original speaker fits. Suprisingly the iphone small speaker fits horizontally in the same fitting. It is one of the few tenders where if it didn't fit you would be in big trouble, as because of the sloping coal bunker there is very little room in the tender to fit the actual sound decoder unit.

Sadly most of Hornby's speaker fitment plates don't work that well. When I complain on this site, I get a barrage of people telling me they do. Your model shop obviously doesn't want to stress the fitting which is what you normally do with the standard fitment, it sounds like you have found a "good guy". What I do is forget the standard Hornby speaker and buy yourself a small iphone speaker off EBay, not only do they fit better as they are thinner, but the sound is a sustantial improvement, they are also easier to insulate. For the cost of less than £5=00 plus p & p they are a worthwhile investment.

I have to be careful before the Hornby lovers start on me. I am really surprised,I would have thought it would have cost more to take that stuff out (surprisingly it used to, in certain cars I worked on). To not be "DCC ready" is criminal, I can forgive them for the lights and not putting a DCC socket in the dummy. I am sure the motor must be the same, you must just have a bad one. Hornby only have a finite number of options that fit. I nearly bought one, it was only I didn't want all the other bits and I already have the Olympic games one. Surely it must have one DCC socket? Mind you Hornby are missing a trick, they could sell the interiors like Triang used to do in the sixties. A DCC socket has got be to Hornby, less than 50p, they already have the wiring to the motor so not a big deal, surely it would be worth it, for all those decoder and DCC sales in the future. Trouble is this is all what business used to do in the 80's and 90's when they could get away with it, I think times have changed and all it gets you is very many bad posts on social media when the Customer finds out.

I didn't realise it was an early ringfield based loco. I am pretty sure last time I looked Peters spares had the drawbar. Is it an 4-4-0 by chance?

I agree with jane2. If you do it that way you won't have the issue next time, if you decide to reset the decoder.

If you want to change the wheels Peters Spares had new ones last time I looked. On your model the insulated wheels are the ones with the gears on. Hornby seem to have used the geared wheels as insulated wheels and spacers on the non powered bogie. As to extra pickups it is really only worth putting extra pickups on the insulated bogie wheels of the trailling bogie as the power bogie insulated wheels has traction tyres, which unless the loco is cornering act as a really good insulator