ColinB

Yes, forgot about the resistor.

I had exactly the same issue with my sound fitted Hornby Lord Nelson, I was about to return it to Rails when I thought I would try it on DCC ( I had bought a broken Elite previously that I had fixed and not got round to using). Sure enough it worked, since then I have gone totally DCC. I must admit I only do it for the sound but it has caused me a lot of agro converting my non DCC ready locos, especially the split chassis Bachmanns.

I will probably use one of those very small Zimo ones, but thanks for clarifying that.

No, don't bother replacing the bulb with a LED. It is only if it fails and you can't get a flickering bulb, you can buy flinkering LEDs. If you ever go to DCC you might have to replace the bulb with a LED as the bulb probably consumes too much power but for DC keep it as it is. With DC to replace the bulb with a LED you would need to use a bridge rectifier, so don't bother.

If Tesco are running out of stock, that is good news, it means that this hobby is not entirely dead and Hornby is still popular.

In answer to your original question, if it is like my 1980's locos with smoke, the smoke unit is on two flying leads which terminate in spade connectors. Just pull them off. The smoke unit on mine is held in with a little screw, and is inside a tube underneath the chimney, unscrew the screw and it should pull out. Watching them smoke is really good but it is very messy, also if the tin foil around the smoke unit gets removed you will find your body will distort with the heat, mine did. I could say replace the lamp that does the smoke box glow, with a led and resistor, but if you are using DC it would only work in one direction.

Yes, it was a good job I read this site before buying extra coaches for my early Brighton Belle, I really cursed those drawbars, as it is so difficult to connect all the carriages, but I was really grateful once I went to DCC, I only needed one decoder. The only downside is that people know that the early Belle coaches are rare and charge stupid prices for them on EBay.

@RileyFlyer There are two types of Merchant Navy class, the original and what they call the rebuilt ones. I think it was in the early 60's that they took the original, removed the streamlining and rebuilt the boiler. The rebuilt one has more complicated valve gear. I better have another look and see if I still have it. Have you tried contacting Hornby to see if they intend selling them again. When mine broke I contacted them and they said ask in a months time, that was about 9 months ago, but you never know. I get the impression that Hornby are trying to improve their act, but it is taking a long time. To give them a bit of sympathy, it is a bit difficult rebuilding a business when the previous owners did their best to trash it ( destroying tooling etc).

I found it wasn't really a choice about current capacity, most normal wire is more than adequate, more about how flexible the wire was. As you are going to fit this inside a small area flexibility is very important. I agree with RAF96 use a socket, it makes testing easier, as you can replace the DCC chip with a DC header to check you have wired it correctly. Also, you might find in the future you might want to add sound or use a better DCC chip, so it is easier to replace.

If they don't do a sound TTS, you could do what I do. In the end with the motor, use a decent DCC decoder like a Horby one (they are perfectly ok) and in the other end use one of the really cheap £10.00 specials off that popular auction site, it has only got to switch the lights so it does need to be anything special. I did this on my Bachman DMU and Hornby HST, in the latter case before I added TTS. If Hornby eventually do bring out a TTS you can then use the decoders for another loco.

The trouble is with not getting the tender top back on, yes if you mess around enough you can probably get it on and that includes cutting bits of plastic to gain more room. The other thing is there is a very sensitive piece of electronics on a PCB that can easily crack if you put too much pressure on it. So most of us are careful, I can't remember which Hornby loco it was, but using the right speaker in the Hornby space for the speaker fouled the bottom of the coal bunker. I eventually used a sugar cube speaker, as it was the easiest solution. So yes you probably can always get the tender top back on, but do you want to risk shorting the module or breaking the tender mounts. Quite frankly on a nearly £200 model, I don't think you should have to.

If it is tender driven then buy some of that PTFE grease off Peters Spares, it does wonders. Put it on the gears and motor spindle. With my class 86, which has a similar motor, someone on this site suggested lubricating the motor spindle and that definiely removed a lot of the noise.

You are right RAF96 if Hornby didn't supply one, people would moan. Some of my locos use the speakers that come with the TTS, others have sugar cube speakers where the standard speaker didn't really fit. The one Hornby supplies is really usefile, to check that the TTS is working correctly before you change the speaker, I do feel a bit guilty about this big pile of scrap speakers I have. It seems wrong to throw them away but I am probably never going to use them. On the locos where Hornby have done a decent job of making provision for them to fit, they work well. The thing I do think is unforgivable is where Hornby have gone to the effect of providing a speaker fitting, but the speaker doesn't fit, or your cannot get the tender top back on, I mean why bother they might as well not wasted their time.

Perhaps what they could do in the catalogue it have a symbol that tells you if the loco has lights, just like the Rails website does and possible if there are fittings for a loudspeaker. Also perhaps a bit more detail, it is like their latest HST, at first glance it looks like it is the same as their previous versions, it is not until you read this site you realise it is a heavily cost reduced item (dummy car does not have lights).

I suppose the thing is if Hornby didn't want people to fit the TTS decoder chip then they shouldn't have made the model DCC ready. I think it is obvious that if you supply a TTS decoder for this model then someone is going to try to fit it, that is human nature, and small children would love sound. All the manufactures seem to have very little info on fitting sound in the instructions that come with the model although Bachmann make it pretty obvious where to fit it, and it fits, unlike Hornby where generally it involves some modification. Perhaps Hornby should have marketted a single TTS decoder with a small round speaker for this specific model. I mean all they have to do is split the twin pack.The trouble is with that guarantee to fix TTS decoder chips within guarantee period, all they are doing is making themselves a load of effort. How difficult is it to put in the instructions "it is possible to fit a sound decoder into this device, but if unsure get help from your model shop", they could even put a post on their webpage identifying the issues.

Actually I don't want to press this but the type of windows makes no difference, the only difference is the comms driver which windows handles and using a control method to send down blocks of data. I assume the person that wrote this never looked at any other applications and how they were implemented. About 30 years ago we used to do it this way when flash memory was new, but soon found out that when the computers got faster it created issues. It is too late now, as once you have designed the bootloader it is for life, so the issue is closed, but as I said they could improve upon the documentation. They could even improve on the error message, so when the message box comes up it could tell you to increase the pc value, it is a very easy thing to do in windows software, it knows what you set as the application reads it. They probably could even do it on their next release as it runs on the main computer. As I said for me it is fixed, so no great deal, and really I didn't need to bother, the differences between my old version and new one were not really worth the effort. Next time Hornby want to write a bootloader, talk to a firm called Vector, in Stuttgart, they design bootloaders for automotive, but just looking at their techniques would give a good idea of best practice and robustness. Also possibly look at how Fleishman do it, but I suspect they got their ideas from Vector.

I wonder if the Merchant Navy tooling was the tooling that got thrown away. It seems unusual that they cannot release the BR blue Merchant Navy, when in effect it is just a repaint of an existing model. I mean they keep doing it with A4s. I didn't realise that the BR blue Merchant Navy was meant to be released last year, I assumed when I saw it in this years catalogue that it was new for 2019. Unless of course they are doing subtle changes to the cab.

Yes, I finally figured it out I put PC at 3. I realised they are just blasting the data down without waiting. What you are supposed to do (I used to do this as a living before I retired) is the computer sends a block down, the slave, the Elite in this case sends a response to say I got it and then the computer sends the next block. It would have helped if there was an entry in the instructions which said if you get the fail error box, increase the value of pc and try again. Normally, as well, you put the box into bootloader using a USB command, that way you don't need to mess around holding buttons in. I recently updated a Fleishmann unit and it did exactly that. Anyway it is fixed now, but Hornby could improve their installation notes seeing as it is a file that gets downloaded and yes I did suggest it to them. Reprogramming is always problimatic, which is why it should be made as easy as possible.

Fixed it, it is just a rubbish reprogrammer. If you set the PC to 3 then it works. I know it sounds like I am a smart arse, but it looks like they are just blasting down data without waiting for a return response to tell the computer it has got it. You are supposed to send a block, check that it worked before sending the next block, but it looks like they don't. Anyway it is fixed now.

I read this post and suddenly realised my Elite Software was not up to date, I am currently at V1.42. So I went to the Hornby Website to get the instructions and latest files. Surprise, surprise the link to the files gives me an error page does not exist. I notified Hornby, but does anybody know what is going on.

I have just checked, forget about the levers wrong tender, the tender gets stuck at the front in the middle where it slots into the bottom.If I remember you pull it back and slightly upwards to free it.

I think if I remember I had this on my ones. Check round the front of the tender it gets stuck here. It is supposed to lift and push back, but I remember mine was stuck at the front. Trouble is if you are like me you don't want to push too hard for fear of breaking the tender. I think if I rember there are some levers that you need to ease off.

Yes, I would agree a bit, but I have fitted 3 Brittanias and I don't remember them being that bad. On two of my older ones I upgraded the tender to the later type. I know on my limited edition one I am sure it all fitted perfectly, although I think I used a "sugar cube" speaker. Yes, I know, I complained about the Stanier locos where they have put a really nice fitting for the speaker, but forgot to include how to pass the wires through. Of course when it is released from the factory the wires pass through ok, because there is no speaker there. I eventually cut a slot. When I complained on this site, people said what is wrong with cutting a slot. On a near £200 loco I do not expect to have to go cutting slots.I get the opinion with Hornby electrics are a bit of an after thought, something they have to do but don't spend enough time thinking about, on their TTS decoders they don't even insulate them (watch the smoke if they touch a part of the locos metal body). That seems to be the difference with Bachmann and Dapol, they spend more time making sure all the electrics are well positioned and work, but you pay a premium for this quality. I think Hornby try, but they really need a decent Electrical Engineer.

That is weird, so it does everything it is supposed to, other than stopping, something definitely weird is going on, the stop command is a software command to the decoder derived from the signal on the tracks. Sometimes because they simulate the inertia, it takes a little while to stop but not stopping at all, just shouldn't happen. In my case the decoder was damaged but it sounds like your's is not. I assume you have tried it in both directions. I wonder if it thinks it is running on DC, but then the sound wouldn't work.

Sorry, didn't notice the entry of the decoders. Does the Hornby Pendolino go better than the rest as that was one of the decoders that I found was ok. I think jane2 has a point check the track connections, and also how many locos do you have on the track at the same time? With DCC they are all using the same signal even if they are not moving.