ColinB

I have an Elite and a Digikeijs (upgraded to the new WiFi hardware). The Elite is great for programming but on a layout I find it is a bit limited. Although it appears to have two controllers because it has a limited display it is a pain switching between the two controls. I don't have a z21 but the Digikejs interfaces with the z21 App on a pad and it is so much easier. Personally I like the PC front end of the Digikeijs so I general use that instead of the z21 app. The big advantage for me is the Digikeijs front end remembers all the settings from last time without me doing anything, I gather the Elite has a way to do but it is not so simple. An Elite style functionality without the screen as someone, said like an E link to me is the way forward, the Digikeijs system is exactly that.

I was reading an article the other day that was saying some of their locos are driverless, controlled by a control room miles away.

Perhaps you could ask for as a further enhancement, is do what the Z21 app does. When the pad is in landscape mode expand the screen to have two locos side by side. As I say just an idea, obviously for the very long term.

I don't know if this will work but superglue doesn't seem to be too tolerant to shear movement, so sometimes you can chip it off. Have you tried gently wobbling the coupling slightly side to side, I know it is glued but sometimes the glue cracks off.

I get most of my spare screws from China via EBay. There are the only ones that do small screws. Generally if it is parallel threw it is M2 or M3. Laptop screws are a good source.

I have had decoders that have done that. I will add that they weren't Hornby. I just assumed something had gone wrong with the internal logic of the decoder device and just used them for testing. The light flashing three times indicates it is trying. I assume you have reset the decoder, that sometimes fixes it but I must admit on mine it did nothing. I suppose the only other thing is is the track connection is a bit dodgy. In my case I tried everything and it never fixed it.

The parts only became available about a month ago. Hornby has just released the loco again and to my horror that was the only part they changed (I had one on pre order ages ago, thinking they would modernise it). I suppose these were the parts they had left over. I know because I had one with broken pickups that weren't available as spares for years.

Yes, sounds like the same.

It is random sometimes you do sometimes not. There is a bug or perhaps lets call it a feature. If you are at the top menu it doesn't recognise you as logged on. When you get the forum topics it magically does. So is it that you see that you are not logged on at the top menu and always do it before reaching the forums?

I am not criticising I did the same with a couple of my ones when the parts became available but amazingly on a lot of replacement parts I buy for other locos they still have the same arrangement. I can't remember which loco it was but the latest part still had that old arrangement. You see a lot of Hornby Stanier Tank locos for sale secondhand as poor runners and you do wonder if this is the cause. The rest of the loco is Hornby standard, gears and motor are as per Merchant Navy, Duchess and A1/A4 so there isn't that much to go wrong although I have had issues with the valve gear.

You can just add your own extra wire to the existing pickups and also delete the stud connection for the other pickup. I do it to all my locos when I convert them to DCC. Sometimes it helps to leave a bit of the lug as it helps with locating the bottom plate. I must admit I never realised the old system was that bad.

I know it really annoys me, sure to get something made in the UK can be expensive but not always. The rest of the World including China is catching up fast.

No as far as I can gather that is for the future, this is just a rerun of the existing design. According to 96RAF the smaller component is based around a different technology, so that is definitely one for the future.

I wonder where they get theirs made? I think AE who make them is a German based company.

Yes plenty, it is just once you get absorbed by the Chinese bubble it is hard to get out. Dapol have demonstrated successfully that you can make rolling stock here and generally it is cheaper than Hornby's. As to electronics, yes there are companies that do that sort of thing you just have to do a bit of work. We are talking 3 "stay alive" components, two smd transistors and a zenor diode possibly a few more bits, hardly rocket science. We used to do it all the time if we got stuck. The issue we used to have was finding a firm that only wanted to do 10 to 100, 1000s they would love.

It is interesting about the fact that the HM7000 is less resilient for a real world operations. I did back to back tests on HM7000, TTS and a Zimo decoder and HM7000 is no worse than TTS although a lot worse than Zimo but there again some of the other makes suffer the same. I don't know if it is capacitance or Zimos have more rugged software that has better error handling. Hornby lost a golden opportunity, they could have done what Zimo do on their sound decoders and made the decoder handle the "stay alive" with just the addition of a capacitor. The alternative "stay alives" are just as good as the Hornby offering, in fact I am not sure if they are not better. The Hornby Powerpack uses 3 capacitors in series whereas the others seem to use four which means they can store a higher voltage without compromising the components. HM7000 is what it is, a cheap sound decoder. I limit HM7000 to locos with tender pickups which means there are very few issues. I know a lot of my locos with "stay alive" will run for 10 seconds or more but in reality do you really need that, one or two seconds should be enough.

Trouble is Hornby has rested on their laurels for 15 years. Both the Cavalex and the new Accurascale versions are substantially cheaper and I assume will have more features. The thing I cannot understand is why Accurascale is producing one, if the Cavalex one is as good as their class 56 then I imagine they will have most of the orders. As to Hornby they need to understand the word competition, their models are expensive with less features. I don't know if their mechanisms are better than Accurascale or Cavalex but they seem ok and Accurascale have that "lifetime guarantee".

No, the Black 5 is keeping that busy.

It isn't the issue, my complaint was that the menus were repeated along the top some of which aren't necessary (they exist at the previous level). An improvement is it doesn't interleaf subjects as the previous version did because you could select multiple check boxes. A better top menu on the "forums" screen would have been "forum topics" rather than "forums" because it makes you think initially that you are on the previous menu which is also labelled "forums" because the two menu bars are virtually the same, so the user doesn't immediately know they have reached the next level especially if the screen takes a long time to update. As I said it works and I doubt that is stopping someone posting.

I don't think the new forum is the issue.

I wasn't sure, thank you for clarifying. I know when I buy replacement valve gear for my Duchess/City locos I always buy the Princess Coronation ones (the ones listed as Duchess are always out of stock).

If you look down the list there is a Princess Corona�on which I think is good enough.

That seems to be a general way things happen. I had a voucher from Tesco's at Christmas spend £125 and get £18 off, which I did, but with my Clubcard discounts it came to under. I had to buy a load of toilet and kitchen rolls (high cost items easy to pick up) to push it back up. I am surprised that they give free overseas postage, very many don't, no matter how much you spend.

I fix a lot of modern day Hornby locos especially broken ones I get secondhand, they are no more difficult to fix than the old Triang ones. There is the issue of spare parts but Hornby use a lot of common parts across models so quite often there is a part available. Even with the Royal Scot valve gear I found that there is another one that can be easily modified. I must admit if I have an issue I normally go to RMWEB, there is a wider range of people that know things and because there is a range of different people you can have a balanced discussion. I have noticed there are less and less people posting on this forum but as I always say it is voluntary to post here so if people don't like what they see they won't bother.

The new forum is not an issue, I might complain that it is lacking in certain areas but it works. I definitely cannot see it putting people off. Possibly people are not getting the answers that they are searching for, is probably a bigger issue.