ColinB

@Going Spare I could sort of believe your argument if they as a company were consistant but they are not, sometimes they list weights and things as parts, other times they do not and although moving production to China has an effect that does not explain it all. I can buy a tender weight for a pre sound Duchess but not for a sound one, they both are Chinese models. It is probably more to do with trying to save costs cutting down on spare parts means you don't have to store them, unfortunately long term it usually spells the death of a company.

It is a nightmare sometimes especially for older locos, like I did a search for my old Ringfield based Duchess and A4. When I eventually find the right service sheet it doesn't include the tender. Also there is a bug on the Hornby site, if you select the latest Duchess it just returns to the service sheet selection. The thing I do find surprising is sometimes a part doesn't have a part number. I suppose it is because they don't want to sell it as a spare, but it is like the speaker enclosure for the latest Duchess, you can buy the updated tender bottom and pickup plate for the speaker fitted tender, but not the weight (it doesn't have a part number). The reason I noticed was I decided to upgrade my earlier loco driven Duchess that was not DCC ready, so I thought I would just buy a new tender bottom and fit the bits in there. In the end I had to "bodge" the existing weight.

Do you know I mailed a popular spares supplier to ask if they did S3968, but with smaller holes to fit the 5 pole motor. I got a reply back saying that it is the wrong size, but I have got one where I soldered up the holes and redrilled them (thanks RAF96 for the idea) that fits perfectly even with my slightly out of line drilling. Am I missing something?

I remember it was a pain to get to, in my case there was no choice. I would like to know if it is the capacitor, it is very unusual for them to die, but they do. These are a bit new and they are not electrolytic capacitors but several years ago, some Chinese firm made loads of duff electrolytic capacitors, which unfortunately got fitted into PC Motherboards. A few years later PCs were dropping like flies because of unexplained issues. Basically the electrolytics were dying before their time. I used to complain a lot about TTS decoders, they are not the most robust of items but generally of late I have had no issue with them. Most of the issues I have had are lack of insulation and trying to squeeze them into a small space, both my fault. Having a Tester to test them before I installed them, solved an awful lot of issues

I think if I remember the bogie unclicks, Flashbang is absolutely correct, just cut it out. Fortunately it is across the motor connection so just snip it off.

No, I don't know everything, there is an awful lot I know nothing about. I did say "fortunately it is not a bearing surface so it shouldn't wear away the solder". Having built Classic Bikes for a number of years and working for a mechanical engineering firm, I do know a little bit about bearings, not a lot, but I must admit my leaning is towards digital electronics and software development. Mind you if you talk about the Arts, I haven't a clue.

That explains the shortage of spare parts for newer models. The trouble is that and the individual gears are probably are the things that would need replacing, but I suppose that is not an issue to Hornby. Funny that you can get the motor housings. There are probably not many 5 pole Ringfields about, or else someone would be making them. I have fixed the issue at the moment.

I have had a lot of trouble with locos derailing at points. On my old ones it is the back to back wheel spacing. With the newer ones it is because the point is not level, has got distorted ( actually the base was bent) or there is an issue with the track entering or leaving the point. Leveling seems to be the biggest issue.

Yes, soldering up the holes and redrilling them seems to work, fortunately it is not a bearing surface so it shouldn't wear away the solder.

Yes, I had wondered about soldering up the holes or soldering some bits of copper over the holes and redrilling. Seems funny that they do the 3 pole one as a separate part, but not the 5 pole, but then again that happened with car spares. Ford stopped selling bits and just started selling sub assemblies. Shame the guy that used to do laser cutting is not around anymore, I could probably have got some made. I will get a spare one and experiment.

In his second post he mentions a Jinty, but reading it again I assume somebody else has it. This post certainly goes round the houses I must admit, I invested in a LaisDCC tester (there are others), it has been a God send for testing decoders. The other day several wires fell off a decoder while I was taking the body off a loco, once I have figured where the power wires went (just check for connection to input diodes), I could then figure where the rest went by using the tester. It removes the unknown of a "duff" loco. Yes, I know I could have made one, but it is nicer to have a purpose built piece of kit, that is reliable. In this case it might be my old favorite the "duff" connector, I have had a few where the connector has a "dry solder" joint, or the socket has lost its grip, so it works intermittently.

The best solution to check if the DCC decoder is faulty, take the 08 faulty on out and put it in the Jinty. Don't put the Jinty decoder into the 08, just in case it is blowing them up. I must admit it sounds like the decoder has died but just in case you could put something heavy on the 08, when you trying to read the decoder, just in case it is not always making contact. Mind you they shouldn't just die, I have blown quite a few up, but usually there is a reason, in your case you bought it with it already fitted so that rules out all the errors fitting it. When you take the decoder out of the 08, check that there is no connection from motor connections to rail pickups, or rails, that will definitely damage the decoder.

I have been converting my A4s and A3s to 5 pole motors using the "Gordon" motor units off Peters Spares and the A1/A3/A4 motor housing. Trouble is the Gordon unit is a great unit with a 5 pole armature and the gears, it works really well, you get a 5 pole motor cheaply. Trouble is the "Gordon" motor unit uses a diffent shape gear retainer as the motor body is different, so I need a different gear retainer. At the moment I am using the 3 pole version S3968, but there is no individual part number for the retainer for the 5 pole in the Service Sheets, it comes with the gears. Of course you cannot get them any more, so I wondered if anyone knows where you can get an individual gear retainer from. S3968 works ok, but the holes are a bit big.

What I did with my Duchess of Chester was to buy the later tender bottom, loco lead and tender socket and put the DCC socket in the tender. That gives you the option to add sound later which is what I did.

Anyway they must have changed their strategy, it appears they are doing a rerun of class 37s and class 66s if their website is to be believed, previously that would have been it. Anyway you are right, I will give the subject a miss and they are sending me a new socket for my damaged one in my King loco.

No we don't, I was just complaining that they don't seem to be very good at satifying demand until someone tried to point out how difficult it was to make them, which it is not.

@RAF96 I see your point but boxes, they are all the same it is just a stick on label, as for the back emf that is just reading from an anologue channel and applying the necessary correction. The diesels probably have the same channel but just don't do anything with the data. Actually I wasn't saying just bash out the odd one, in the case of certain models it would probably be another batch of 1000. Please don't lecture me on embedded software, I spent 30 years writing it, from using assembler to the C language, ranging from programming roms, to the current flash eprom. I was responsible for setting up the software from scratch, operating system, interrupt and input handlers, so yes I know a little about software. As for the difference between diesel and steam, it is just a program loaded into rom. They probably both use a PIC to do it, as for the sound if I remember rightly unless it has changed it it just a case of loading data into digital to analogue converter. Incidentally it probably takes about 30 seconds to program one these, I doubt they have much memory. Anyway, not my problem. Funny working for one of the major Automotive businesses in the world you do learn an awful lot about process, production, where to make money and surprisingly where to lose it.

I know you are supposed to talk to the retailer, but the problem here is that they are not really going to help much. Unless you are lucky, they are not that technical, there are basically a shop. The only thing they can do is send you another one which they already have done. I bought a DCC Concepts DCC decoder, when it arrived, there was no way the lead they supplied was going to fit it. I phoned the retailer and they said I could return it, or basically bodge it. So I phoned the technical people at DCC Concepts, they were very good, what had happened was the wrong lead had got packed and they sent me the right one. So sometimes it is better to talk to the people that know. I could tell many stories about customers getting "fobbed" off in car dealerships about known issues with their cars, when the fault is well known by the manufacturer. It is not always the Dealers fault, quite often they just don't know.

I have one of these, I bought it to clean in a tunnel. Trouble is it relies on picking up power from the track to run the cleaner. Well if in my case you want it to clean up the track because the loco cannot pickup any power then it is not going to work. I did work on a circuit to run it on batteries if it lost power, but my initial go with a PP3 battery didn't work. I was going to look into rechargables, that seems the way to go. I like the concept of the Dapol, the only other issue I have with it is a bit light and easily derails. As for the tunnel, believe it of not a Peco Track Cleaning rubber on the end of a long stick, worked really well. I had even tried the Woodland scenics hand held track cleaner, but it don't work well when used horizontally as it the case of a tunnel mouth.

Hornby seemed to have curtailed their TTS decoder range, I compared the 2019 catalogue with the 2020 catalogue and there were at least 2 less this year. Now seeing it is only blowing a signature into a ROM, I feel there must be some sales strategy associated with it, to make us rush to buy it before it sells out. You cannot find a class 37 TTS decoder at the moment, it hasn't been out for a year yet, you would have thought they would have monitored how well they were selling and got some more made. I suppose we are lucky in they are thinking of making some more. The more profitable firms not only look at advanced orders but how well they are selling. In the case of TTS decoders it is a decent income for very little outlay (I would be surprised if a TTS steam decoder is physically any different to a diesel one).

Why not then buy Peco points, they are about the same price and in the "Settrack Range" the same radiuses and then you go to their Streamline range which has an array of different points. They are slightly better engineered.

Does anyone know whether an early J13 body (about 1980s) will fit the newer China built chassis? I assume the newer China chassis motor is quieter and the wheels will be better.

Sounds very weird, what you could do is remove the motor suppression capacitor, that might be causing some issues, I have had one go short circuit on me. I suppose the only other thing is that when they built these, they had a bad batch of motors but that seems unlikely. B12 don't have much valve gear so it can't be that getting jammed causing the motor to overheat. Have you tried asking Hornby? A duff motor suppression capacitor definitely would take the decoder out. Surprised a Lenz failed and the Hornby didn't, normally it is the other way round.

I think you can possibly do this with a Hornby decoder, but you would have to look at adding some diode logic. Rear lights are driven via function 0 or 1, and different bleed resistors for the headlight leds dependant on the function.

In my case Hattons were pretty fair. There were two for sale on the auction site for £90 to £100 as "buy it now", the one I got from Hattons I think was about £30, more than what they were new but I thought a reasonable price. Some of the things on the auction site remind me when I go to Autojumbles (I also build Classic Bikes as a hobby) you see a part on a stall for some extortional price and it is still there a year later, just waiting for the person that has to have it. There are some items on that auction site "buy it now" that are the same. I could see why Hornby wouldn't want to make it again, I found that to fit it next to the station, I effectively had to lower it by 15 mm below the station (there is a post about Goathland station). So basically I "dug out" my base board by 15 mm to get the right height next to the station.