ColinB

Thanks for the info RAF96, I think was trying to make it more realistic by having separate leds. I think for the HST I used tower leds stacked next to each other on each side, I think the pain was linking them together, to reduce the number of wires.

The later Hornbys had pickups on all wheels including the tender, if it is a 5 pole motor they seem to have pickups on all wheels. I recently converted my A4s by buying the upgrade parts from Peter's Spares, the big issue is getting the wheels as on the A4 the chassis polarity changes so you need insulated wheels on both sides, as you are forced to use the geared wheels on what is now chassis ground. I found a big improvement by getting the loco to pickup on both sides and connecting to the tender with a connector.

Have another look at the motor it is probably one of two things. It is either the screws that hold the brush holder on, on a lot of motors one of the screws screws into the plastic and then the metal of the motor, or if you look under the brush holder spade connections, under one of them there is sometimes a lug that the brush holder rests against. Hornby try and catch you out by including a wire to chassis from the brush holder, you remove it and think that is it. I converted mine to DCC and I don't think it was that difficult. The most difficult bit was replacing the lights with leds, I wanted white and red ones. If you have the motor where the brush holder screws into the body, I usually tap both holes out and replace with m3 or m2.5 nylon screws. Do both so that next time you take it apart you don't mix them up. It is cheaper than a new decoder.

3 diodes in series seems to work, so it obviously works better at about 10 volts. I used 1n4001s to generate the drop, I will go for 1N4148s eventually as they are smaller.

Well after what Chrissaf said, I thought I would try it with no DCC decoder but with straight DC. Would you believe you get most smoke at about 8 volts, above this it smokes in the reservoir but not out the unit.

When you put the resistor in, it won't be passing a 100 mAmps anymore, but point taken. If I use 50 Ohm that would be half a watt at 100 mA., which is not that hot, but it will be lower as it is now passing about 70 mA. In fact seeing as I have a whole chassis I could even use one of those wirewound ones in a case, that you screw down. Just to test it out I could try the diode trick, if I remember back to my analogue electronics days I think you can do something with a transistor and zener diode. I was really more concerned if anyone had had a previous issue.

No, that is not the issue the decoder is working perfectly ok, it is not overloading, I checked all that before I started. The decoder is Zimo, but that makes no difference as its limit is 500 mA, I am drawing about 100 mAmps. No it seems to be a function of smoke oil, I am wondering if the element in the smoke unit gets too hot, so rather than getting smoke the oil just vaporises. The actual smoke unit is screwed to the Duchess's metal chassis, hence why I took it out of the Stowe, so it shouldn't melt the body as it is at least 20 mm away from the body. It is DCC decoder so it will be fed by constant voltage, I could put a resistor in the lead feeding the unit, which in effect would lower the voltage. I just wondered if someone had a clever idea.

I have converted a lot of my ringfield motors. The thing that catches a lot of people out is the lug underneath one of the motor brush connections or the long screw that holds one of the brush holders on.What I do is if it is one where the brush holder screw screws directly into to chassis, I retap the hole to take a metric screw and then use nylon screws, I normally do it for both bushes so it stops you in the future getting mixed up. Remember having converted you will probably going to use a DCC decoder, so you don't want to blow it up because you put the wrong screw back. Alternatively, some people just screw a nylon screw into the existing hole.For the ones with the lug, just snap of that piece of the brush holder. Now when you come to do the changes to make it DCC compatible, use an 8 pin socket. Now wire to the socket. Finally before you put the DCC decoder in, there are three things you should do. Firstly check between pins 1 and 4, pins 1 and 8, pins 5 and 4, finally 5 and 8 for a short circuit. Secondly put the loco on the track check for a short circuit between pins 1 and tracks right and left, then 5 and tracks right and left. Assuming all is ok, then put a dc blank header into the dcc socket and check the loco runs. Now you can fit the DCC decoder. I blew up many DCC decoders in my early days, I found this technique works. If you don't want to use an expensive DCC socket you buy cheap ones off the auction site, alternatively make one with veroboard and socket strip. If you have a diesel there is a guy on off the auction site that does a nearly nice one that brings out the lights to separate connections and it is cheaper than the Hornby one, shame he only started selling them after I converted my diesels. I use the Horny ones as it makes the conversion look professional.

This is more for information that anything else. As you know I have the Skaledale Hogsmead Station basically Goathland Station. Anyway I have managed to acquire the whole lot, station plus the coal drop. I put it on my layout but the coal drop looks too high plus it means you need a really high ramp to get track in it. So I did some measuring and found the coal drop has to sit about 12mm (1/2 an inch) below the track level. I thought the station sits perfectly with the platform at track level. I could not understand why the back of the station base was not at the same level as the coal drop. After ages studying photos I found that the Skaledale model of the station loses about 12mm between the upper storey and lower storey at the back (look at top right hand window and start of annex roof), which explains why the station sits nicely on the layout, whereas I need to dig a hole for the coal drop. I can easily sort it out but I was just intrigued. I am not complaining about the model, I can see why they did it, it makes it easier in the majority of cases to site the station.

Check the valve gear is not stuck or it could be one of the wires to the motor has fell off. I don't know if this loco has one but if it has, check the 4 pin connector that connects tender to loco is fully pushed in (do this first). Generally if the motor control on the decoder goes it takes the decoder with it, so usually no sound. I suspect there is something wrong with the motor wires from the dcc socket. The two inside pins on the 4 pin connector from loco to tender are the motor wires, check one hasn't fell out.

Try Lendons of Cardiff.

You are not using electrofrog points by chance?

With electrofrog points if you want to go really slow over the points then the loco is less likely to stall as there are not so many bits of plastic on the frog area of the point. The down side is you have to do a bit more planning with your layout. On an electrofrog point straight out the box the point blade puts an effective short across the turnout side not being used, so you have to use insulated fishplates. I use electrofrog points, but I also have isolating sections so if the point is in the wrong direction the loco stops. To me I don't know why everyone goes paranoid over having electrofrog points with DCC, DCC is just using a digital signal, ok if the loco loses the signal it stops but is does on DC. A big advantage of DCC is if you have issues with the locos stopping at points just add "stay alive" to the DCC decoder. Lets face it, if you use code 100 Peco track, they don't make electrofrog slips or cross overs ( I really wish they would redesign these with less plastic).

I have used all sorts especially in the 8 pin variety and they all seem to work. I suppose it depends what you want to do. I like locos with sound and the ability to switch lights on and off, hence why I use DCC. I don't tend to mess with CV values unless I have to. So it depends what you want to do. 21 pin decoders tend to be more expensive than the 8 bit varieties, so most of my 21 pin decoders are the really cheap LaisDCC ones. These seem to have an issue with their software to deal with missing signal (losing the DCC signal from the track) but on Bachmann locos they are ok, as these models have lots of pickups so you don't really get the issue. Generally I use Hornby or Zimo for all my 8 pin applications, I like Zimo and I like dealing with a particular company that sells them. Trouble is I use a Fleishmann two track or a Hornby Elite which I get the opinion are far superior in operation to the Select. Why the Select was previously so bad I cannot understand, as an ex embedded software engineer I would have thought the Select software would be the same as the Elite, with it being configured for just the one channel. It is normally cheaper to develop and maintain one version of software.

This is the one I was looking at. It looks like it is marketted by the same people. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/21-Pin-DCC-Breakout-Adaptor-MTC21-Socket-Solder-Pads-Ideal-for-Hornby-TTS/362980115653?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649

I saw someone on EBay was doing a TTS to 21 pin adapter PCB which is quite useful for locos where the 21 pin to 8 pin converter will not fit. It even had the names of the corresponding wires on the PCB. The 21 pin to 8 pin adapters don't work on diesels with low roofs like a class 37 (I killed a TTS decoder trying to get it to fit).

Yes, if Lendons have a part in stock they are normally very reasonable on price and quite frequently have parts others don't. You are lucky it is not a newer version, you just have to breathe on the valve gear for it to break (ok a bit of exaggeration), it is so fine.

The other issue sometimes is, will the TTS decoder actually fit in my loco. The actual TTS decoder board is bigger than a normal Hornby decoder and then there is the speaker. Generally if it is a latest Hornby and it has a tender, Hornby makes provision for all of the TTS sound components to fit in the tender.

That is weird, I took the one I got with the Pendulina set apart and even though it was fed from a separate supply, it still had a bridge rectifier in it. Admittedly this is a PWM controller. Looking at the videos on YouTube it looks like it uses the coil of the loco as an inductor, although it still has a bridge rectifier. I can only assume what the circuit is, as I said I am no expert on thyristors. By effectively "chopping up" the DC you get a more efficient power supply with less heat. I suppose that is why without a loco in the circuit, like open circuit you get high voltages. I assume they went to PWM as it is a better option and safer with DCC decoders running DC.

Unfortunately plastic ages and goes very brittle. I find points are the worst, in my case Peco ones, they are alright if they stay on the layout and you don't touch them but if you remove them to refit them somewhere else I find the rail becomes unattached from the plastic. The clips just fall apart. That is why I very rarely buy second hand points. Similarly flexible track becomes solid.

In response to someone's earlier response to check if the motor has lost magnetism. When I said that you check the amount of amps the loco is drawing, that was without any load (no carriages), but I thought that was obvious. As for traction tyres, rubber goes hard naturally over the years try driving a classis car/bike with 30 year old tyres plus for the last few years rubber is not what it used to be.

Everyone seems to jumping onto this remagnetising thing with ringfield motors. I know it is an issue with Wrenn/Hornby Dublo where they have a solid magnet, similarly Triang/Hornby X03/04 motors, but I have not noticed an issue with any of my Ringfield motors. I did have an issue where I put the flexible magnet in the wrong place, but other than that I have not had any problems with magnetism. On most occasions it is the armature or brushes. I think if I remember back to my basic electrical engineering the magnet is less likely to lose is magnetism because it is in a ring, but I may be wrong. Most of my ringfields are at least 20 years old, I have most issues with traction tyres. The reason ringfields go much faster is that ringfields are generally 3 pole motors, most loco driven motors are 5 pole, plus the gearing is much different. Try running your ringfield at crawl speed and see how it compares with a modern loco. I have tried it with a tender driven Duchess and the equivalent modern loco driven version. Oh, if you want to know if it needs magnetising check the current drawn by the motor, if it is excessive like nearing towards 1 amp or greater then you have an issue with magnetisation. Worse case the motor will actually burn out.

My Stowe was the early type, but I know what you mean about the sword type pickups, they used the same system in the A3s. Before I sold them I did contenplate converting them to dual pickups, Lendons still had some in stock, but I decided I would rather have a loco driven one, the eight wheeled tenders don't seem to drive as well as the 6 wheeled ones.

Thryristors are more of an AC device, I must admit I have not used them other than in "crowbar" protection of a power supply. I think they are used in switched mode power supplies but you wouldn't be using them in a model railway power supply. Generally you expect to see a transformer feeding into a bridge rectifier and either feeding an electronic circuit or in the case of H&M a wirewound rheostat. Incidentally, that is why I am always saying on this site, that nobody should use this type of DC power supply anywhere near anything electronic, so if your loco has a factory fitted DCC decoder but works on DC the unregulated voltage is enough to blow it up.

The biggest issue I have with tender driven locos is that they don't pick up power from all wheels, generally they get power from the loco for one side and the tender for the other side. On some of the later locos Hornby improved this, so some of the late China ones do. The other issue is traction tyres on the tender going hard, but you can replace these. If they are not oiled they make a winding noise, but that is easy to fix with some oil. Kings are quite a short wheelbase so I assume they are a bit easier for the tender to push around also the tender is the 3 wheeled variety and from my experience are better for traction than the A3/A4. Reliabilty wise they are perfectly ok, I have been sorting out my really old locos, I have just got back into the hobby and was surprised that most of mine still worked after being stored for the best part of twenty years. A tender driven loco is usually substantially cheaper than the later loco driven version, so if you are happy with one then you are saving quite a bit of money. Converting them to DCC is possible, I found doing the opposite of Hornby works really well, put the chip in the loco and connect the loco to tender with the same lead Hornby use on their later models.