ColinB

Get some Hunt couplings, they are brilliant. You might have to adapt the old couplings, but seriously they are really good.

I have to admit as of late all the TTS decoders I have bought work perfectly ok. That is not to say tomorrow when I run one, it will not fail. Trouble is Hornby needs to sort its QA out so none of the sockets get miswired. I know on a Hornby Schools class loco it blew up a Zimo sound unit in one direction, later found to be a mis wire on the 8 pin socket. I now check the socket with a multimeter before I fit any DCC decoders, but not everyone is like me. The two I have for return, one failed after 6 months, the other the sound is very badly distorted. Trouble is some, that people complain about, are factory fit ones, so that is not a case of bad customer fitment. Is it just the 1% failure and the 99% good ones we never hear about, or is there a fundamental issue?

I wanted it to go with Goathland Station, or Hogsmead and it appears to be the right size looking at the photographs.

@ArmyMedic no that is Hornby, I have two TTS decoders to go back, they gave me return numbers and told me to wait. One of them I have been waiting for about four months. I know the Hornby lovers will moan at me, but it is not typical for a profit making firm, I worked for one for 30+ years, even though trading conditions at present are difficult. I returned a failed sound decoder to another firm and it got turned round within two weeks. I think Hornby had lots of issues even before the pandemic..

Talk about the sublime to the ridiculous, I ordered R8639 water tower and it is half the size compared to R8851, but it is perfect for what I want it.

I didn't even know it had one. It definitely doesn't attach to the valve gear on mine, but there again I didn't even see one.

I think he established in his last post he had a short across two pins. Easily done those 8 pin dcc socket boards are terrible to solder to, I have done it loads of times, but I normally catch it when I do my final tests. I did ask if it was a new loco, obviously not.

Normally getting spare wheels is an issue, Hornby stopped selling them on their own, but fortunately they are old. It is the one thing Peters Spares does sell, he even sells the complete upgraded bogie with better wheels, for not a lot. I have loads of them where I was buying bogies for the pickups (sadly the only way I could get them). Just go on his site and do a search for ringfield motors.

At last, we now know it is loco driven. Now my ones don't derail (I have about 4), so it is not a design fault as with many locos. So assuming your track is reasonably level, there has got to be something wrong with the actual loco, which might explain why someone was selling it. Although I say back to back spacing on these it is a bit difficult to get it wrong as usually the front bogie wheels are capped. You need to do a complete look at the front bogie. Check that it is put together properly, next check the wheels on the bogie, they may be buckled, that would cause an issue, I had it on a Stanier tank, then check the front bogie is free to move. I suppose the next thing is to check all the other wheels for buckling. Sorry that is the best I can think of.

Just make sure pins 1 &5 go to motor and 4 & 8 go to track. It does really mater if they have not marked pin 1, because for these wires it is symetrical. You only have to worry if you start adding lights. So if the socket is upside down pin 5 is pin 1, pin 1 is pin 5 so no issue really. There might be a square around the pin on the PCB to indicate pin 1, or a dot. Sadly, this has become a thing you seem to have to do with each new loco from Hornby, Bachmann and Dapol ones seem ok, but they tend to use 21 pin sockets which forces you to design your electrics a lot better. If it was a brand new loco, Hornby owe you a new decoder.

As well as doing all the checks Chrisaf recommends what I also do is put it in programming mode and see if I can read the address, or manufacturers id. At least in programming mode there is less current going into the loco. The other thing I do is put the loco on the track, remove the controller from the track and DC header from the loco, so you just have the socket. Then check if pins 1 or 5 are connected to the track, if that is the case then you have wiring fault. Depending on the motor you should read a value between pins1 and 5 which will be greater than 10 ohms and probably less than a 100. It could be of course that the decoder just touched something metallic when you put the loco together, especially if it was a Hornby decoder that doesn't have any insulation. I have done that lots of times.

I assumed it was the later loco driven one, if it is tender driven then it is a totally different issue. I think there is also a spring washer under the front bogie mounting screw, I found with my tender driven ones it made a hell of a difference if it was missing. You definitely need to check the wheel spacing on those, mine were all over the place.

Compared the door size with all my other models and yes it is the right height, so as you say just an enormous one. The windows are huge. Anyway put it next to my turntable, where it does not look quite so out of place.

I must admit I was just saying how you could do it, if you can buy a board then that is ok.

Weird that, I have several of these locos and they are probably the most reliable ones I have. They only derail on points if I run them too fast. For once I would suggest front bogie wheel spacing.

You would have to do what Hornby do inside their accessory module, Heljan do the same inside their turntable module. Pass the DCC signal through a bridge rectifier AC terminals, take DC output of the bridge rectifier connect to large capacitor and then connect this a 5 volt regulator. Does the Arduino take 5 volts or 12 volts, if 12 volts use a 12 volt regulator. Take your output from the 5 volt (LM7805) or 12 volt regulator(LM7812) and feed to Arduino. The only thing I would be concerned about is how much power does the Arduino take, because this has to come off your dcc bus and you might also need a heatsink on the regulator. You need a few extra capacitors but that is the basic idea.

I will get the vernier out and start measuring. I bought it to go with Goathland station (Hogwarts in Hornby speak) when I placed it near the station it looked like I had added a block of flats. I do know with the Goathand station range they made some items in two different sizes, on different production runs (separated by a few years), the first run being too small. I think it was the passenger waiting room. @HrnbyinNC I must have the earlier version of the bank as mine is not out of scale.

I did some surfing even trying to listen to YouTube videos as I have a class 59 and would like to put sound in. It is hard to tell, they seem to sound different. I found this thread in an alternate chat room asking the same question. https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/45345-class-59-sounds/ It seems even if you wanted buy an expensive one, it might be difficult. A rival manufacturer is just about to release a class 59, so hopefully more options will be available then.

When I enquired 6 months ago, someone said that one used a two stroke diesel whereas the other one did not. THe class 59 uses a EMD 645 engine wheras the class 66 uses a EMD 710 two stroke engine. I think RAF give me the original data, which also included the number of cylinders each used, which again was different, which will change the exhaust sound. So I assume the sounds will be different.

I must admit I liked my H & M until it blew up one of my DCC decoders running in DC mode (I was using it to check out the loco). When I opened it up I was amazed it wasn't in a museum, there were components that I hadn't seen since during my O levels, that is how old they are. Eventually I will take the insides out and replace them with a modern type controller, the box is ok, as are the transformers although I do worry about the earthing seeing as it is a metal box (please don't tell me how to earth it, I know exactly how to). I now use the controller I got with the Pendulino set and yes it is PWM, so the locos buzz a bit, but it so far seems to power all my locos even my old Wrenns, so not such a bad design by Hornby. Sure it trips out occasionally but as I am normally just checking out a loco then no big issue. Sometimes it takes a while to get an an old X04 based loco to go, but generally it gets there.

I would have thought yellow shorting to black would have blown up the decoder, but I am not entirely sure. I think the easiest solution which is what I would do, is disconnect the wire that goes to the rear lights and just wire in a separate led and see if that works properly, then take it from there. Are you checking any of this with a multimeter? If not I seriously suggest you do.

I bought this water tower second hand, I have no complaints about the model, nice detailed model, good condition. The thing is, it dwarfs all my other Skaledale buildings even my other water towers, were they really this big? To me it looks more like an O gauge model that OO, I must measure the doors and compare them to the doors on the other models.

I had exactly this same issue with a Tornedo, where I had added cab lights and firebox glow, but the sound decoder was in the tender, so I used a function decoder in the loco. Chrissaf is right there is a means using CVs to make a function move to another number, I thought the Hornby decoders supported this but obviously not. I never quite got round to trying it. So you could change the decoder to one that does, I think the Zimo ones do ( I say Zimo because I tend to use them all the time), and most of the others do and they are about the same price as Hornby. Alternatively what you could do is swap the functions around so F1 is guards light, and F2 is cab lights. I know it is a bodge, but that is best I think you can do.I am surprised you only have sound in one end, the TTS comes in a dual pack.

Even the old one can be converted, they appear to use the same motor.

I still think it is something to do with the "in situ" wiring, I think you need to start checking around the rear light connections that are on the loco in question.It is not the sockets you are proved that, so it has to be something unique to the one that has the lights on permanently, the only thing I can think of is the actual wiring on the leds. Why don't you disconnect the rear lights from the socket and attact a separate led just to see if it works properly.