ColinB

I have one of these or did, I found the body fitted a loco drive so did that eventually. Before that though I did convert it to DCC. I tried a lot of decoders when doing this conversion and a lot of my other ringfield based locos. I found the stall current on a ringfield was about 0.8 amps so that rules out a lot of decoders, even a lot that did work burst into smoke if they stalled on the points. In the end I found the Zimo ones worked the best the mx600R being the one I used. I also found that the pickups were an issue so I added pickups to the insulated wheels on the loco and hard wired loco to tender with a two way wire and connector. As I say in the end I found the body would fit the loco drive chassis so that was the way I went in the end but the previous solution worked ok. I just hate tender drive locos especially when the loco slides because the valve gear gets stuck. The really big issue with Ringfield motors is the traction tyres, even if you add pickups like on the later Chinese ones, rubber is such a good insulator that they don't work.

I am sure some of the ones I have taken out rely on the tang at the end. As it is pointed it pushes in but doesn't come out very easily.

The princess tender weight works if you use you old tender bottom and cut the hole for the socket in it.

I know about the weight I have been complaining about that for ages, they do it on all their speaker based tenders, why defeats me. You will have to make something up. As to the speaker buy an 8 ohm one from Road and Rails.

Trouble is I binned my one as it stopped working so I don't know the wiring. Normally you would put a large electrolytic on the output from the bridge rectifier but this might have something different because of all the different options. You should also put a 0.1 uF capacitor in parallel with it.

You might find adding a Powerbank to Union of South Africa an issue as there isn't much room. There again it has so many pickups you don't really need it.

That is what I thought but in the past sometimes they were out of date. What would be a useful enhancement is for the App to look at what is loaded and compare it with the latest and if they are the same, put up a message to say the profile is at the latest level. Yes that is how we used to do it in automotive. Seeing as a reprogram can take over 30 minutes in some cases, it is really annoying if you hit the wrong key.

Well it is getting the signals then for it to smoke. With my one I ran it with the original profile that it came with, I didn't load the latest one. I must admit I didn't compare it with the Prince of Wales but the amount of steam seemed reasonable. It also took about 30 minutes of running to completely clear the reservoir. I do run it on DCC if that makes a difference.

That is interesting mine worked straight away, perhaps I put too much water in. The pipette was having difficulty sucking up 3 ml, so I put 3 lots of 1ml. Perhaps by accident it was more. The other thing to remember the signals to control it come via that infamous drawbar we hear so much about.

Looking at the web it says it is a Railroad Flying Scotsman. The tender on a Railroad A1/A3/A4 is different the mounting point to screw the tender together is different. If you look at the other tender bottoms for A1/A3/W1 you will notice it has a boss at the back. The Railroad one doesn't it just has a hole which a boss on the tender bottom pushes through. Do you know when I was looking for the non Railroad all that popped up were the Railroad ones. Now I am looking for Railroad ones I can't find them, I think X7632 the Thompson A2 should work or a Mallard Railroad Sound one. Lendons have a Tornedo one X6340 which should be perfect, it is also a lot cheaper. I am pretty sure that is what I used. When you take your existing tender apart check to see if I am right about the mount pushing through from the tender bottom. Hornby do so many different combinations is is difficult to predict. I don't have that loco so I can't check.

Doesn't R3250 already have the decoder in the tender? The answer to the conversion is yes I have converted my A3s and A4s to have the decoder in the tender. Again the big issue is the weight as it needs modifying to allow for the speaker arrangement in the tender. Anyway to do it you can either cut a rectangular hole in your existing tender to fit the 4 pin socket or alternatively buy a new tender bottom. Now previously you could buy an A3 tender bottom from the newer loco, but last time I looked they were all sold out. As the A3s, A4s and W1s have similar tenders the base of a W1 will do, but just do a search for A3, A4 or W1 tender bottoms. The other thing to note is yours has painted axle boxes looking at it on the web. The weight I cut slots in the original one so it misses the speaker mounts and if you want the decoder to sit nicely on it a wide slot so the decoder socket sits low down. I use M4 posts threaded with M2 (you get those from China via EBay) pushed into drilled holes in the tender. You can then mount the decoder socket properly. You have to cut into the weight as there generally isn't enough headroom for the decoder header because of the tender features. You should be able to use the old tender bottom, with a bit cut off to miss the socket.

John I am glad you said that, when I first heard about the issues with the Black 5 "I thought how do Dapol do it" and was surprised it is very similar. Obviously not an issue for them, but them I have about 6 Hornby locos with it and so far no issues. So I wonder what the problem is?

It is interesting I have a few locos with this drawbar and so far there have been no issues. When I first heard about this I checked my Dapol Manor and this has roughly the same arrangement but I have not heard about anyone having issues with it. So it makes you wonder what Hornby have done wrong. We know on the newer locos they use more tracks ones on the top and bottom, whereas I think on all my earlier Hornby locos they only used the ones on one side, similarly with the Dapol.

That is a very worrying admission that it is quite common.

Two of those connectors on the drawbar are to the motor if they are not making contact properly then the motor won't work. He does not say whether he got the smoke to work, that definitely requires the drawbar connections. As the loco has tender pickups you can get sound even with the loco disconnected from the tender, it used to be an issue even with the 4 way connector if it wasn't pushed fully home. If you watch the Black 5 issues with the drawbar videos, they are the classic symptoms. As much as I would like to blame the HM7000, generally they are pretty reliable.

It is an electrical issue, I doubt that he has even loaded a profile, it comes with it already loaded and set to DCC. So unless the motor driver on the decoder has blown it is probably the connections to the loco.

It is probably that tender drawbar connector, even if it isn't, that is what everyone is going to blame. I am surprised though I ran mine around my layout for about 30 minutes to clear out the water, without any issues. I am sorry to hear that though, I have never had one of those bogies drop off, so very unusual.

4 ohms is only good for Zimo and LokSound decoders, even then I think there are exceptions where you have to use 8 Ohms.

I use roughly the same speaker in all my locos unless it is the latest Hornby where they provide the sound box in the tender. I tend to go down the list of 8 ohm speakers on Road and Rails and select the one that will fit. I use currently his iphone speakers, the square ones and the super flat ones. West Country tenders are are nightmare, I think there are 3 types, some with one screw, some with two screws and then there is the longer one that got fitted to Merchant Navy ones. I think on the one where I wanted it to fit a later tender (I had the tender top but no tender bottom) I used flat pieces of thick plastercard glued together glued to where the tender mounting points should be, so there was more strength.

I think you might have an issue with your old tender fitting the new tender base, they moved the mounting points. Mind you there are about 3 types of tenders, so I could be wrong. Have a look at Road and Rails, they do decent flat 8 ohm speakers that sound and fit better.

No, it was a different number X50025.

Yes it does. Hornby have another part number for X6113 listed on Lendons, it is the same part, why they changed it who knows. The other issue you might find is Hornby on the Duchess wired up the socket the wrong way round, the 4 pin socket is on the PCB the wrong way round compared to all their other models. So rather than than wire the PCB to take this into account, they wired as per all their other models so if you swap tenders with say an A1, you get an immediate short. So I usually swap the wires around.

Do you know I have quite often bought X7585 just for the weight, why Hornby don't do it as a spare defeats me. I would quite happily pay £10 for it rather that milling my old one to fit. I also have about 6 duchess tender bases left over where I have just taken the weight out.

Yes I have done all three of these locos. The big issue for me was getting the weight for going in the tender. You may want to look at X7585 which is a complete tender base for a Duchess including wheels, 4 way socket and DCC socket, available from Lendons or New Modellers. As to the parts you mention they will all work, try and go with the ones that include pickups.T he only issue is the axle boxes are yellow, so you either paint them black or buy another tender base and swap the parts over. X7585 is the best value as you get wheels tender bottom plus all the rest for less than the cost of 3 of the individual parts you need, plus the all important weight. You will also need an X6113 loco to tender lead. For the Britannia you used to be able to buy a complete tender bottom like X7585 but at the moment I can't find it. The West Country is a bit more difficult as they changed the design of the tender mounting points. So what you do is buy a new tender bottom X9027 and use this as a pattern to cut a rectangular in the tender bottom for the socket. You can probably use the old weight in this case. I forgot the drawbar, I just use the old one strip off the bits of copper and it will work. You might need to buy a drawbar that includes the stepped screws, just for the stepped screws. Why don't Hornby have a decent spares system? Better not go there. Hope it helps.

They probably did, that was the first one I found when I was looking. Actually it is not difficult to make one if you are into this, I could, but it is just not worth it for what I paid. The original topic was about a sound decoder not working not the merits of plagiarists. If you want to pay significantly more then buy the original.