ColinB

No RAF96 you don't read what I said, "You would have to add your own 6 pin". As I said will it do, obviously in you view it will not. There is no need to be so rude. I have a good percentage of my life writing drivers for PC software so I was just trying to help. You obviously have input to Hornby which I don't, unless GM are buying the lead off Hornby and the driver, I suspect that they are using a commercial product like 95% of the electronics world. In fact if I remember rightly when I connected my Elite with Railtrack I had to add a driver from the railtrack disk, so normally you load the particular manufacture's driver instead. As I said I used to design vehicle simulators, a little box that runs twin PICs communicating with a PC over USB. The PC then had a program that loaded up the data into the remote box. Sound familiar, just like railtrack does. I wrote both ends one side in C and the other in Windows C#. I used a commercial product in between the two. You obviously a very rude person, that cannot listen to new ideas. In my previos job I was the communications expert, if you want to link two computers together I was your man, so I think my old olleagues would find your post very amusing. For your information even the Hornby lead has to have a driver and somewhere in Railtrack there will be a .dll that talks to it, that is how all Windows programs work.

I don't know I don't have a Select, someone said in another thread that it was because of the lack of cable. So I went looking for one. Perhaps that is why Hornby decided not to sell the cable.

You obviously didn't read the link, it is USB to RS485 intelligent cable, not for a walkabout but to connect to a PC.

Is this cable any good for loconet on a Select. You would have to add your own 6 pin connector? https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004BM7JLG?ref=em_1p_0_ti&ref_=pe_2443691_510614531

Sounds like you have a short somewhere. What sort of points are you using? The thing to remember with digital, although there is no longer a plus and minus 12 volt supply, the dcc signal has a plus and a minus, so you still get the same issues if plus touches minus. With my layout the biggest issue was having two loops one inside the other connected together via crossover points. If you have this arrangement then make sure you use insulated fishplates on the parts of points that join the loops together.

The Hornby website has them. They are £2.99 plus post and packing. For some reason a search on X8809DM gives an error, so search on X8809. It comes with motor pickups and DCC connector just remove the motor if that is all you want, it is still cheaper than anywhere else. If not Lendons have the just the motor.

Chissaf, my Fleishmann is exactly the same, you have to press it once to switch it on, press it again to switch it off, so nothing unusual about the Select or Elite. You might want the function to stay on permanently as is the case with a light.

With my Duchess of Sutherland I managed to get one of the later Princess tender bottoms which will take the 5 pole motor. Peters Spares were doing the Henry 5 pole motor unit which drops in, I had to paint the wheels. I then put the DCC socket in the loco and connected the tender to the loco by the same 4 pin arrangement as a modern loco. I also added a 1980's smoke unit and firebox lighting. It goes really well, the only issue I am still having is the pony truck wheels don't like my points, but that should be fixable.

I have for a while suspected that certain DCC decoders work better with poor signals from the track. I was testing out a Hornby Fowler 4P that I recently bought secondhand. My usual choise of decoder is a Zimo, but I have some old different types I have taken out of locos that I have converted to TTS decoders. I won't mention the decoders name (it wasn't a Hornby or a LaisDCC), but I put it in the 4p and the loco ran terribly stopping at points and really only going well at full speed. So I changed it to a Bachmann, it became an entirely different loco, ran at much lower speeds, didn't stop at points, runs really well. I had already stopped buying the previous type of decoder, really only buying it to fit in an Adams loco (which it didn't anyway), but it was just a surprise that two decoders would behave so differently. Needless to say long term it will be a Zimo as the Bachmann is a bit big to fit in the space and I have never had any issues with these. I probably will use the suspect decoder for lighting in the non powered end of a DMU.

@Paramedic67 I used to work in engineering for a major car company, we used to do stupid things to save pennies. I can only assume when Hornby designed it, they found on their prototype there was no need. If you watch Sam's Trains on YouTube you will be amazed at the amount of trains he tests that derail and some of them are really expensive. He puts it down to them having a perfectly flat layout.

@RAF96 I told the guy that when he first asked. I had only recently fixed one for someone else, the pickup board plus connector including post and packing I think was less than £10.00. Either way this is £140 loco. What Bachmann probably recommended, on this loco it only has pickups in the loco but passes them to the tender for the DCC connector which on this model is 8 pin. So basically you wire the pickups in the loco to the motor in the loco, like they used to be wired. That way you don't need any connections to the tender but bye bye DCC. Trouble is people pick up just the loco and of course leave the tender dangling. The one I fixed for the guy said it came back like that from his supposed Repairer.

Secondhand is ok if you know what you are doing. I have just bought a second hand Bachmann Class 66 and Class 47, both are very good. Mind you I have bought some lemons, trouble is they are a lot of people that own locos and DCC ones that know little about fixing them, fortunately all the lemons I have managed to fix. Add to mix early Select controllers that seem to have a lot of issues. Loco is moving forward so something is working, my favorite is the pickups, it looks like it is loosing power. Check they are all touching the wheels and that the wheels are clean. I bought a Fowler off someone which had supposedly had the sound chip removed, I don't know how they did it but they damaged the pickups while they were doing it. I had just had to fix the pickups on the class 66 I bought. Yours is a Bachmann so the mechanism will be roughly the same. Turn the loco upside down and move each wheel from side to side, check that the pickups touch the wheel as you move it in and out.

I am probably 99% sure it wasn't the Elite. I had a Bachmann decoder do exactly that, admittedly it had been buzzing at low loads for a while, there is even a post on here about it. Hot days seem to be the worst for decoders blowing up, yes it sounds weird, but I think what happens is a lot of these decoders are in small spaces and when they are used in a hot enviroment, they just cannot just rid of their generated heat.

Between the bogie and the slot that allows it to move from side to side. There is a screw whose head is on the underside of the bogie and whose nut is behind the slot. Well it is on all my ones. The idea is to put pressure on the bogie.

Right I have just checked on my two one is a Railroad A1 loco version the other is the blue non Railroad Flying Scotsman. If it is the same as mine the front bogie, moves in a slot. On my non Railroad Flying Scotsman there is a light spring between the bogie and the slot it moves in, on the Railroad version of another A1 it is the same. On the Railroad version I cannot remember if it had a spring and I replaced it for a stronger one, or just added the spring. Either way that is where you add it. So if it has a spring, get a slighly stiffer one, if it doesn't then add one.

Your railroad edition I doubt has tender pickups. If you are a bit mechanically minded you can add them, I bought the tender base from the non railroad version (you need this just to get the tender pickups) and then fitted the tender pickups to the tender (you cannot use the non railrod tender bottom, as the tender body won't fit). You might need to add a connector to connect the tender pickups to the loco ones (some FS locos already have the connector).The next thing to do is put a better spring under the screw of the front bogie. What I did with this, is buy a pony truck spring from an old Hornby loco (new ones don't have moveable pony trucks) and cut it down to fit under the screw that holds on the front bogie. It is a bit of trial and error, too much spring and it will lift the driving wheels off the track. Do these fixes and it should work wonderfully. It seems all the Railroad A1 locos have these issues, I have Tornedo and another one that I had to do the fix to.

The gear is probably split. Can you hear any clicking? It is meant to be tight on the shaft which it sounds like it isn't.

Has anyone had any success in fitting a class 47 TTS decoder into a Lima class 47? To me the current draw of the motor looks to be very near the limit of TTS. I have a Network South East one to which I have added lights and extra pickups which I would like to add TTS to.

No problem, I have exactly that setup. The Bachmann class 37s are brilliant. You will need a 21 pin decoder, if you are thinking of fitting a TTS decoder you have to "hard wire" the 8 wires to a 21 pin adapter, there is not enough headroom to fit a 21 pin to 8 pin converter (some people say there is, but in my experience there isn't) which stops the body sitting nicely and stops the lights working.

Why has someone restarted this thread? Anyway, I have learn a lot in the mean time. The reason a manufacturer would say not to use a particular controller is that it would do damage to their product. In the case of Oxford I can understand why. My Adams loco has a lot of SMD components on the circuit board that feed the motor, these are probably rated at 16 volts maximum. H & M controllers have no electronic regulation so you can easily get peaks of 18 to 20 volts, so basically would damage an Oxford loco, in fact I am sure that is what fried the input choke. This also applies to running on DC with a loco fitted with a DCC decoder, I could not understand why the decoder "smoked" and died when running with my H & M decoder, until I measured the voltage. So yes in their day very good controllers, put them anywhere near a modern loco with electronics fitted (Bachmann diesels have tons for lights etc), forget it. You can fix it by adding some decent smoothing to the transformer inside the H & M.

I reread your post again and realised it was F5 so I tried it again. Yes, a short double whistle. It might be the quality of the speaker, I use a small iphone one which give really good quality. I must admit this TTS decoder sounds a lot better than the one fitted to my Merchant Navy Loco, but I think I used a suger cube or the original speaker in that one.

My double whistle is on F3 and it sounds really good, although I do use an iphone speaker.

Looking at your photo is appears your loco is a tender driven loco. I assume you want a new one as the copper connector has snapped off. I googled Peters Spares and it looks like it is the same as an A4, it is also fitted to Gordon from Thomas the tank. The part number is x2243. I am not an expert so look at the photo and check it is the right shape. If you are into electrics, replace it all with a two pin plug and socket off EBay, it will run better.

Do the rest of the sounds sound ok? I have a TTS P2 which I thought the sound was a bit distorted especially on the whistles, it wasn't until I bought another one (Amazon were doing them cheap) that I found out. Unless they haven't programmed it properly, I would expect them all to be the same. I have this TTS decoder on a King but when I tested it all I would have checked is that it made a noise. Trouble is I could go and test it again but I don't really know what it should sound like.

I haven't read all the posts on this subject but it sounds like most people have covered the conversion. I have done a load of DCC conversions, first thing I would suggest is if there is room fit an 8 pin socket. It makes debugging so much easier, if an 8 pin won't fit then use a 6 pin. Now as everyone has said you need to isolate the motor. Again it looks like in the post someone has covered this, but just in case. On the bend piece of wire that holds both brushes in place make sure both sides are insulated (one side should be already). Remove any wires connecting to the brushes. Put the loco on the tracks and check it doesn't run. If you have a multimeter check that neither has a connection to the tracks. Now wire the loco pickups to pin 4 of the socket. Using a spare piece of wire connect pin 8 of the socket to the loco chassis, so on the non socket end solder a 6 ba or M2 solder tag and then find a suitable screw on the chassis to screw it to.. Now solder two wires one to pin 1 and another to pin 5 of the socket. Attach these to the motor brushes, either by soldering or using those bend pieces of copper. Now with a multimeter check that these two wires have no connection to the tracks. Now for a X04 motor you are going to need something like a 2 amp DCC decoder, forget Hornby they don't make one with enough power and heat dissipation. I used a Zimo, but it is up to you, it needs to be at least 1.6 amps to cope with the motor stall current, but Zimo make a 2 amp that should be good. Before you put the decoder check continuity between pins on the socket, there should be no connection between any of them except 1 and 5 where you should read the impedance of the motor (about 20 ohms or less). Now if you have DC dummy header, put ii into the socket and check the loco runs on DC. If it does then it looks like your wiring is ok. Right now put the decoder in and set up the DCC controller so you are in programming mode. Now with the DCC controller check you can read CV 8 the manufacturers id. If it comes back with a value rather than FFFF then you are all set. I don't know what Railmaster does with the DCC decoder data but I assume it is so it can map CV data, I assume you will not be doing much with CV values so just enter your decoder in Railmaster as a Hornby one, hopefully it should work. If you use a 6 pin socket then you need to need to change the pin numbers. This is how I do it with all my locos and I have converted about 20, Limas, Hornbys and Bachmanns, with a socket it makes it so easy to debug. I must admit I have never done a X04 motor as generally I find them too noisy. Hope this helps and I apologise if I have covered anything that anyboby else has said.