ColinB

I had an interesting one today. My Duke of Gloucester that I bought new two years ago came with sound fitted, I decided to run it. It runs for about one loop and then the sound stops, intially after about another loop it stopped but it seems to have stopped doing that after I played around with everything. It comes back with a reset. So I rewired the socket and a fitted new socket and changed everything, except the motor. Still it does it. Even if I put one of my spare TTS decoders in it, the same happens. I eventually fitted the decoder to a diesel and it works perfectly. So the only thing left is the motor. All the pickups are perfect, what I will do tomorrow is swap the tender with another Cornation class loco. Obviously, there is something with this loco does not like TTS decoders. Oh and I checked for capacitors and inductors, not even any around the motor. I even changed DCC controllers and it still happens. I have my suspicions what it is, but at the moment it is guess work.

I hate to tell you this but my Elite software level is 1.45, that is what my Elite displays at "power up", so I think you must have loaded the wrong file, unless it was a mis type.

Contrary to what Fishmanoz says it appears, that there is sometimes an issue with the Elite writing data to Zen decoders. I found that occasionally it did work which is probably why the person who started this thread was having issues. My Elite that is happy writing to most other decoders, but failed 9 out of 10 times to change the address and similarly even doing a reset didn't always happen. I tried it with twisted pair, short leads, all on decoder tester to rule out any other variables. So I thought I would try it on my other dcc controller, a Fleishmann, it worked every time, so obviously nothing wrong with the decoder. So make of that what you will, just in case someone suffers similar issues. I tend to use Zimo and Hornby TTS decoders, so I only noticed it when I was trying to change the address with my older locos. It could be my Elite has got an issue, but then if it had, it wouldn't program virtually every other make.

If your "Black Five" is the same machanism as mine (mine is LMS red), then as RAF96 says its is the left hand tag that has the connection to chassis. Assuming it hasn't snapped off you will see a piece of plastic pressing on the left hand tag, behind this is a post sticking out from the chassis which the tag presses against. I think on the ones I converted I cut off the spade tag and soldered the wire directly to the left hand brush retainer. Hornby and Lima both did this on later models. On mine it is the only connection to chassis, there are no screws as indicated on Chris's diagram, but again it depends if your mechanism is the same.

What I suggest is clean the wheels with an ink rubber or track rubber (really a more sophisticated ink rubber but better) and finally finish off with cotton buds. I use ajax cream on the buds but most people use alcohol. Put some special model railway grease between the gear wheels, not too much as it might get onto your newly cleaned wheels. And put a small amount of model oil (plastic friendly) underneath the small gear connected to the motor. I use silicon spray as I use it for my classic bikes. See how the loco runs, if it doesn't run very well you might have to change the brushes and springs, but don't do this unless you have to, bits ping out when you do it. There is a video on YouTube to tell you how to do it. The traction tyres have probably gone hard so you might need to change those. I have a blue one of these that I recently serviced, in my case I had to change the brushes, but I am sure they were shot when I bought it secondhand. On this model one bogie picks up one side of the supply and the other bogie the other (modern locos pickup both sides of the supply on both bogies), so your track has to be spotlessly clean.

Talk about misinformation, firstly not everyone uses switch mode power supplies, go and feel the power supply that came with your controller, if it is heavy, it contains a transformer. The big advantage of a transformer is it provides electrical insulation which means safety, plus switch modes get expensive for high currents. So yes for your christmas lights they use switched mode, and telephone charger, but not for everything. That is why you can get electric shocks off cheap Christmas lights or chargers, if the switched mode is not properly designed. The best way to think of the buzzing is what is a speaker, a coil of wire, what is a motor, several coils of wire, so if you pass a non dc signal, which pwm is, it will buzz. As I said in one of my earlier posts cheap transformers buzz, where the laminates between the coils are loose, you used to hear it a lot in cheap goods from Hong Kong in the 60's, modern transformer don't. As for the buzzing in your loco unless you are passing DCC through a DC loco then not an issue. The PWM in a Hornby controller uses a relative low frequency, if they have had used a higher frequency then the buzz would be more of a whistle. You probably if you wanted to, could get rid of it using electrical filters, but I an not going into that. The reason you must not pass DCC or 15 normal AC through a motor is the motor will not move so you get no back emf, so effectively the motor is effectively "stalled" so you are passing maximum current through it which eventually overheat it. That is why I tell people to be very careful when doing a stall test.

@Zak Zak exactly my arguement. We have seen it happen with many industries. I spend a lot of time building classic British bikes and I read exactly what went wrong with them, basically the same issues we are talking of here. Our car industry the same. Fortunately, the car company I worked for, looked around and did something about it.

I have a lot of issues with new Brits, pickups you name it. I did buy the two that cause most issues, second hand so that probably explains it. The valve gear on these is exceptional complicated so one jam and that is it. I haven't bought the latest one so I don't know what the quality is like. I think that there is a compromise with separately added parts, so they have to glue them on, but they don't want to use too much glue (cost) but also they don't want it to smear everywhere. Some of the glue they use also seems to have a shelf life, like bits start falling off after about a year. Trouble is when you manufacture remotely it is difficult to police these things, unless you have a huge travel budget and from what I heard from fellow engineers travelling to China, it is not a trip you want to take too often. One guy said it reminded him of the Black Country of the bad old days of the sixties when he was growing up.

Yes, that is the way I do it and then spend a while sifting out the irrelevant ones. Trouble is, people get used to using the better search facilities offered by other sites, so expect them all to be the same.

I think this thread started on the quality of Railroad models as the person had bought them for their son. So we are not really talking about the super detailed ones. There is a big difference in Railroad models and the super detailed ones described, although of late some super detailed models should be put under the Railroad range. Having said that even with the super detailed ones you seem to always have to have a tube of "Super Glue" handy to glue the odd bit that falls off, the early Schools class was terrible for it, thankfully I bought the latest version and they seem to have corrected that error. As for the electrics I get the opinion they get added as an after thought, just look at the Adams DCC decoder location and compare with the Oxford one (if you notice the removable coal load) which makes it difficult in production.

Yes, but on the £200 Flying Scotsman you should expect no issues, but I bet there are. As for Sam's Trains, I really like his reviews. A lot of the locos he reviews I have and generally he is right about the analysis. Just recently he reviewed some Hornby coaches and basically his review stated that really they were just the 1980's version but repainted with newer wheels. The opinion I got was that they should have been released as Railroad versions, but I think we know why they weren't. Anyway the good news for me was I just bought the 80's version second hand and changed the wheels, I saved a fortune. There again it takes all sorts.

@Yelrow if you do a look at Sams's trains, he does a calculation of whether a loco is more expensive now than it was say 10 years ago. The detailed versions are about 20% more expensive taking into account inflation. Now probably their market has fallen so they are not shifting the numbers, so perhaps that is why they are more expensive, but they are definitely not cheaper. They are also cheapen down models by removing lights etc, but charge the same price as say a model with lights (eg class 66 loco). Take a Bachmann class 66 apart and compare it with the Hornby.The latest Flying Scotsman is nearly £200, so for that price you should expect a quality product. Secondly you are not comparing like with like, the expensive products you mention are completely different in build and quality. The reason pre-orders are high is that Hornby limit numbers, so people order them in case they cannot get their chosen loco. I know in my case that is what I do, though I must admit when Rails cancelled all my Hornby pre-orders, I had a review and figured there were only two that I really needed (I think initially there were originally 10). There again with the pre-orders, one of those locos had been on pre-order for nearly two years, so long, that I am beginning to wonder if I really need it, especially as it is just a repaint of an existing model. I am sure I am not the only one that thinks like this.

I think you will find Fishmanoz that unless you get the exact search details correct, the search engine on this site quite often fails to always find previous threads, hence why people start new ones. Anyway, I think loading of the decoder comes with the instructions for the rocket.

Funny I have done all that, in fact that was the first thing I checked. I did find if I disconnected the 9 pin connecter and remade it, it worked for a one off, but then reverted back. I even tried them both in my decoder tester and got the same fault. I suspect I know what the issue is, timing, probably in the decoder, it was just for information for other users. When I get round to it I will check them out with the Fleishmann. I was going to replace them anyway, so it has just hastened the task. This is related to the original post, in both cases you are writing to registers in the decoder. As I say the Elite works perfectly for Hornby, Zimo and LaisDCC decoders so "butchering" the connections on my Elite with wet and dry seems a bit excessive. If don't have issues now, you definitely will in the future as you have just removed the plating. As I say for me a bit annoying but not a real issue.

I have wondered about Hornby's Q and A for a while and the more I read posts on this forum, the more I wonder. One the things you have to cost in when moving your production is whether you can afford the rejects and how you are going to support Q and A remotely. Remember Q & A is an added cost, which is a favorite to remove next cost cutting exercise. I watched a program where they were saying China accepts 10% failure rate, now with most small businesses that would put them out of business. I worked for a vehicle manufacturer and that would definitely not be acceptable. I mean we have had a whole batch of locos where they wired up the DCC wrongly where it would damage DCC decoders. Normally I can fix most small issues, but I feel for those people who cannot. My biggest worry is, I buy a loco check it works, run it for a couple of days, then use it later. From what someone is saying I could be sitting on a time bomb, where it just fails in the future and we know unlike Bachmann, it is not easy to get valve gear spare parts. The other thing that is very worrying, is quite often if you email Customer Services you don't get a reply, again not very good. On the other hand, do we just hear about the bad ones.

Sorry atom3624, the reason a microwave makes a noise is not because of pwm, I think you will find it is because of the fan, similarly on any computer the noise it makes is the cooling fan cutting in and out.

I did the test on one of my ringfield motors actual stall test was 0.5 amps, calculated value at 12 volts was 0.67 amps, so as I said the calculated value is higher which is the one to use as it is worse case.

I did say it was only a rough way to measure it. I would have thought the magnetic strength should have no effect as the motor has stopped moving and you are feeding it with dc, but I may well be wrong. When I was doing the same test myself I looked it up and that is what it said. Either way, my way you will get a higher value for the current, which is better for worst case calculations.

Ok, if you want a rough value then measure the resistance between the two terminals of the motor. Then assuming maximum voltage is about 14 volts to the motor, then the stall current is 14 volts divided by the resistance you measured. I(current) = Voltage/ Resistance which is ohms law. When the motor stalls there is no back emf, so the motor becomes a pure resistor. What you also have to do is is mesure the impedance of you multimeter leads. So just connect them together and read the value. Subtract this from the value you read across the motor. A stall test will give give the most accurate value, but this will be near enough. The other thing about a stall test is if you are not careful, you can burn out the motor (watch Sam's trains video), so be careful.

In the old days you used to get the mains frequency buzz if the controller contained a cheap transformer or passes a lot of current, walk past a substation Today's buzz is as I said before because of the pwm frequency they use. When I made my pwn controller years ago the locos used to sort of whistle because I used a much higher pwm frequency than Hornby use. This probably explains why you don't hear it from the gaugemaster controller, they use a higher frequency. All dcc controllers use pwm to control the motor, generally that is the only cost effective and efficient way for a digital system to control a motor, but you don't hear a buzz from them. As I said it all depends on the frequency of the pwm and how it reacts with the coil in the motor, to make a tuned circuit, which is why it makes the noise.

I just noticed this thread I am having similar issues, I am not doing anything fancy just changing the loco address to 47. Up to now they were all set at their default address of 3, but now I have got round to giving each one an individual address. All my Zen decoders either get the wrong address so if I put in 47, I get 46 and no it is not the issue of the value changing when you press enter (really horrible bug/feature) or stay at the default of 3. I initially thought it was the "stay alive" so I removed them, still didn't work. So then I tried it on my tester still no joy. I will try it on my Fleishmann later and see if that performs any better. I have one gaugemaster that also fails to program. Funny everyone moans about LaisDCC decoders, they work fine.

From what he was saying both units are reasonably new, so I doubt they need any lubrication yet. I use that special grease that Peters Spares sells.

I converted this loco to dcc. I cheated on this, the ringfield motor on this is the same as the Henry drive unit that Peters Spares sells. The big advantage is with this one it is a 5 pole motor and slots straight in, plus it has pickups on both sets of wheels on the tender. It sounds like you are doing the right thing, the wiring sounds correct. What you should do is wire a socket in so you can change from dc to dcc by just changing the header, that is the way I do it, it saves a lot of time. What it may be, when you replaced the screws you disturbed the brush retainers, so the brushes may no longer be touching the armature, so with a multimeter check you have a resistance reading between the two brush clips. It happened to me when I was converting one of my ringfields. What might be good idea is to remove the orange and grey wires ( to prevent damage to the decoder) and check that the motor still runs with just dc. Did you know on these, you can rewire the loco so it picks up on both wheels. If it is the same as mine there is no connection to the chassis of the loco, the loco power comes off wipers. So if you make a connection to the chassis and replace the pin connection with a plug and socket, you have pickups from both loco wheels. It will run a lot better.

I ran my class 66 Evening STar and other than a growl as it starts moving, it is quite quiet. It also goes incredibly fast.

I have class 66 evening star, I don't remember mine being that noisy. The motor is the standard one fitted into the steam locos, I had to take mine apart to remove the motor capacitor that had gone short circuit. I will get it out and see what it sounds like.