ColinB

I see you have wired the lights in, so you can tell if the decoder is working, if you can switch the lights on and off. Do they change when you reverse the direction.

There are a ton of laser cut items on EBay made by lesser known manufacturers. I gather they are vert good.

I don't know if you have done this, but if you have then accept my apology. If you have a multimeter, put the the HST on the track and check if there is any continuity between the the motor brushes and the track, It should read open circuit. It is usually a good idea to use an 8 pin socket, it is much easier to fault find. Basically if you have an 8 pin socket, there should be high impedance between all pins except pins 1 and 5 which should read somewhere between 10 and 100 ohms. The other thing to be aware of, is the stall current of a ringfield motor is higher than what a Hornby standard decoder can supply.

Sorry sxbiker you have confused me, what resistance? The motor will draw more current with a weak magnet but that is not because of resistance that stays constant, its back emf is reduced .

From what you are saying it is an old Bachmann, the new ones have 21 pin. The reason I asked is I have had issues with the 21 to 8 pin converters. There is very little space at the top of a class 37, so if you use one of those it does funning things to the loco as it gets squashed as you screw the body together (I managed to blow one up doing exactly that). It doesn't matter which way round the header gets inserted, all it means is that the lights won't work properly and the direction of travel will be reversed, but most times you don't notice as you just drive the controller in a different direction. If it is the same class 37 as I have with the 8 pin DCC socket, it doesn't have lights, so to be honest it doesn't matter one bit if the chip is the wrong way round. The class 37 TTS decoder is quite a new version, assuming you bought it new in the last year, so the DC enabled should be disabled by Hornby before you picked it up. The only thing I think it could be is when you were programming it, the DCC signal got corrupted, so it has put the chip in a weird state. As per my previous post, try resetting it and see if improves it. Do it a couple of times to ensure it worked and read back the loco address in programming mode to check it has worked properly. To all the other members of this forum having the chip the wrong way round only effects the lights and motor direction, so it is not magically going to fix a broken decoder, a reset might. If the motor runs but the lights don't work then it is a valid fix.

At least the TTS is doing something so that is good news, you haven't blown it up. Try resetting the TTS decoder by writing 8 to CV8, check it works with the loco address of 3 (reset value) and do the programming process again. It is a Hornby loco you are doing this to or a loco with an 8 pin DCC socket?

Sorry RAF96 I thought the idea of a chat room was to discuss topics and it might be very important to somebody thinking of using them. I just thought somebody on here might know. As for contacting Peco, my last request for data about code 75 rail has been unanswered for nearly two weeks and that was a just a question about what sort of code 75 would be applicable to fit with my turntable. Peco probably wouldn't answer the question of why they they are discontinuing an item, firms don't generally do that. I know Ford changed certain items on a car because the Head of Engineering changed, but they are not going to tell you that. It is not a real issue to me, it just seemed with more computer control, the low version type would be the future. Interestingly most of the clone types "Hattons", "Gaugemaster" are the low energy types. As for the code 75 rail, I took a flyer whilst on holiday and bought just the ordinary code 75 stuff. I suspect that they probably didn't sell many as it seems not many people knew they existed, I only found them by chance when going through one Suppliers website, sadly most of the Suppliers search engines don't always pick them up.

I have close to 60 points on my layout, so Fulgurex is not an option. Anyway the PL10 is probably the most efficient way of driving the point, if it is mounted as part of the point. As for the springs, they go without having the point motor, generally it is clip holding it that becomes loose. The Suppliers I looked at implied that Peco were discontinuing them. On Hattons website it says "This point motor is now discontinued from Peco's range" so unless someone is not telling the true, I assume Peco are just running out what they have left..

Any idea why Peco has discontinued the low energy PL 10 point motor? I would have thought these would be more suitable to the digital age drawing less current, but I assume they didn't sell well.

I had one like this about a year ago. Admittedly it was a P2 one, but they are all the same just with a different sound profile, worked perfectly as a decoder but no sound. It is a return job.It would be interesting to know internally what is wrong, but it is academic as you cannot fix it. Either return it to the Dealer or get a return number off of Hornby.

If you are going for the separate relay option and the CDU, there are more cost effective solutions available. I will not mention them here as it is the Hornby website.

@RAF96 my shrink wrapped one on the HST worked perfectly for six months, until that really hot day, so who knows. It actually failed while it was running round the track. I am just super careful now. Mind you I was fitting a LokSound for somebody when it failed, "I thought what did I do wrong ?" until the person I was fitting for said it happens a lot, so it appears they all have issues.

@Howbiman, yes, that is exactly what I did in the end. I used the one from bwtechnical but it is the same idea. I am still waiting for the one from Strathpeller Junction to arrive (they don't Ship as quickly as bwtechnical).

It might work but not a particularly good idea. It appears from a previous post Hornby only rate the product to switch one point. I did take my unit apart to check the components and according to the spec it should switch 6 amps, I assume not for very long (no heat sink). If they are low power versions you might have more success. Personally, I would stick to the Hornby advice.

I must admit the latest batch of TTS decoders have been quite reliable, since I started to worry about the heat transfer. I did have an HST fail during a hot day, but I am putting that down to it driving a 5 pole ringfield and it being covered in heat shrink. The other one didn't have sound, sent it back to Hornby, got a new one and only recently noticed that the sound is very badly distorted, so it is going back. The rest to be honest are usually my fault usually they seem to fail when trying to squeeze them in a small space. The last one was a Class 37 one where I was using a 21 pin to 8 pin converter in a Bachmann. I knew the space was tight but as I screwed it together the decoder just failed, I just assumed it touched something. I have had lots of issues with the sockets, on lots of the sound decoders, not only Hornby they seem to use thinner pins so quite often a standard decoder or DC header will work whereas a sound decoder will not. This coupled with the Production process seeming to damage some of the sockets, so perhaps that is the issue with a lot of factory fitted ones.

@RAF96 I suppose it is, but there again if it was an extra £10.00 I would have been less likely to buy it. Designing a Tester is not rocket science, I gather Chrissaf has one he made himself, it is laying out the pcb that is the pain which I assume even LaisDCC had to do. I could have probably made one from veroboard but it would not be as nice and probably not so reliable. I don't know if this is what happen but generally they get copied when production gets "outsourced" to China. So in those cases I have very little sympathy. I do know that the DCC socket that bwtechnologies are selling at the moment is an idea I suggested to them about a year ago, I was just happy they took their suggestion.

I have only broke one and that was when it fell off the table, but that is not the point. Accidents do happen, by making four different types of coupling Hornby quadrupled the types of spares they need to retain, so it seems they took the easy route,not to bother. As for the plastic going hard, well we all know that is an issue long term. I can understand not sourcing a lot of parts as it costs money, the thing that really annoys me is that they don't carry spares of things that are most likely to break. The price of their locos is nearing £200, so you are going to be very upset if you cannot get a part to repair it, especially when their main competitor seems to do a much better service.

When I first started with DCC, I had a load of issues with TTS, but more recently not so many. Firstly TTS is like bone china, very delicate, I worked in electronics for a very long time and never encountered such delicate electronics. Firstly there is a heat transfer issue, so if you cover it in heat shrink or basically anything, come your next hot day and it will probably fail. So if you can, just insulate the underneath, the thermal sensistive components are on the top. Otherwise put sleeve round it but make it loose so air can pass over it. Be ever so careful with the speaker connections, if they short it is bye, bye decoder. I cannot understand why factory fitted locos fail, surely Hornby can get it right, although I must admit when I look at the way they mount the speaker, I am always surprised, as it doesn't seem a good fit. I have a lot of them, they are a cheap source of sound and as long as you are careful they are good for the price. I think one of the issues is Hornby have used components that are very near their maximum current limit, so if there is any issue with the loco you have issues. I had the whole of the valve train jam on a Zimo based sound loco and once I had fixed the valve gear it worked perfectly, I suspect that if that was TTS it probably would have died. There again the TTS is a third of the price of a Zimo or LokSound, though I do suspect if Hornby were to up the price, I definitely would think twice about buying them. What I also did was buy a cheap LaisDCC decoder tester (the DCC snobs moan about them, but they work perfectly well) to test the TTS decoders before I fit them, it seems to resolved most issues. Quite often it is the DCC socket in the loco is the issue, the sockets are not very good.

I looked at this, they seem fundermental to the way the loco leans. The thing that Hornby didn't do, the KISS principle (keep it simple stupid) in making them all the same or sticking to two types. Then they decided not to bother sourcing any spares. Of and of course, making them so flimsy that they fail especially when the plastic gets old. I will say no more. The thing I find even more amazing was this was targetted at the toys market, so when the teenager breaks the coupling and can't get replacements they are going to be put off buying Hornby for life.

Ok, to control two locos on two tracks you just need to know which train is on which track. So if you have two locos one with an id of 7 and one with an id of 9, then you set the loco on the first controller as 7 and the second controller as 9. The only issue you have is the Elite has two controllers but it is not a true twin track controller, to take control you have to press down the appropriate controller knob. I have a Fleishmann true twin track controller with the left hand part of the screen showing controller 1 and right part of the screen showing controller 2. With the Elite it is not so easy, but possible. So as long as you remember which ids are the oo ones, and which ids are the N gauge ones, obviously they have to be different between the gauges. So yes it is possible and easy to do.

They look really good, so who makes them? Is it Gaugemaster?

Firstly, you cannot do what you are proposing, because when you go backwards the 12 volts polarity is switched, so when you wanted to go backwards all your locos would have to go backwards. The thing I cannot understand DCC is just a means to power a loco, so there is no reason not to have isolating rails, in fact on my layout it is wired as it was when I ran DC. I need the isolating rails so that if the point is in the wrong direction the loco stops. I have a twin track dcc controller, a true one, not like the Elite where you have to toggle between channels. So I can control two locos independantly. I am sure if you look enough you will find a decent dcc controler that has a pc program where you can control more. I don't know if you use dcc to power the points but again you don't have to, again I use the old switch system.

Thank you RAF96. so actually you can use any supply as long, and a very big as long it is within the specified voltage range. The only issue is with a 30 amp powersupply if it shorts out in the plug it will probably melt the connector and possibly what it connects to, but most power supplies have trips. As Chrissaf says user a smaller one if only for the fact it is easier to manage (not so heavy). I think I run my Fleishmann on an old laptop supply.

@Will Hay, it does not say in the text unless I had missed it, which version is this. You say you bought it last January, which I would have thought would make it a Railroad version as they had just come out. Then you say that this Dummy has a chip in it, which if it was a Railroad version all it would be would be a couple of leds/bulbs. Or is it the non Railroad expensive version. I find it amazing it could do so much damage.

Ok, if you are really worried put a 4 amp fuse in the lead, we are only talking 12 to 16 volts. I cannot remember if my Elite has a fusable link on its input, it should have seeing as Hornby cannot guarantee which power supply you are going to attach. Actually if the short circuit system failed you have real big issues anyway, I think you will find the circuit board drivers will fail before it draws the maximum current. Now over voltage is a different issue.