ColinB

Road and Rails are one of the good ones, another sound supplier I dealt with even when I explained my sound decoder had an issue immediately said that it was my loco that was causing the fault. I have worked in electronics for a number of years and it does go wrong, probably more reliable than many mechanical things but it still fails occasionally. Yes, shorting out any of the speaker wires will kill the decoder as it will on a car radio.

I bought two when they originally came out. One was a special from Hattons and the other from someone else. I think both were Heljan special builds. It runs ok, but then I am not an expert. The only issue I remember was it was difficult to get apart to add a DCC decoder, the body was a tight fit to the chassis. So what did you want to know?

Yes that is what was implied when it was first released. I have spent ages trying to figure out how they could do it with only two wires. I am a bit rusty with electronics since I retired, but the fundamentals don't change. Perhaps originally they were going to do it, hence the 3 way connector but decided not to and then came up with a suitable excuse for the missing wire. It happens in Industry all the time. Sometimes you add an extra pin for future expandability, if you are going to design a pcb you add all eventualities. Either way it doesn't matter anymore, it does mean though you might be able to find room for "stay alive" if the Powerpack won't fit.

Go on EBay it is a LaisDCC, they do 5 sizes, I have just ordered 2 (I use them for all my 0-6-0 locos without tenders). Alternatively Digitrains do them as well. The guy at Digitrains recommended them. He generally uses them or the Train o Matic ones. The LaisDCC ones are smaller. Yes, Sam is running the decoder in DCC mode, most of us do, why not if you have a decent DCC controller. The thing that surprised me was that we were all told that the Powerbank was specially designed to go with the HM7000, now it appears it is no different. I did wonder as it only has a two wire input, to vary the charge rate you need 3 wires, as in the case of the Train O Matic one.

Interesting, I have used the Powerbank on the HM7000 and the LaisDCC with Zimo decoders, there wasn't much difference in time. Obviously a lot is dependant on the motor current. I fitted one to a really old Hornby GWR Pannier 0-6-0 Pannier tank with the Scalextric motor and definitely that one didn't last as long. It doesn't happen with HM7000 but decoders like Train O Matic and Zimo have a CV which defines how low the loco will run without a valid DCC signal. Actually I doubt Sam is worried about Warranty but generally you save the bits you cut off and resolder them back on if there is an issue. I would have fitted a socket, but normally I fit a 6 pin one but that would have been useless for HM7000 as Hornby don't make a 6 pin HM7000. To be honest it only needs to last a couple of seconds, just enough to get over the dead parts of a point or crossing.

You obviously didn't see his top ten products from Hornby, HM7000 was quite high.

I am sure they watch them so they can criticise. I am not even sure they watch them to the end, just the headlines. I thought it was quite a good video, how to make a rubbish loco work a lot better. He should have bought some cab detail off Peter Spares to make it look a bit better. The irony of it is, I only realised what good "stay alive" can do, when I bought a Powerpack for a loco with HM7000 in it, the previous iterations I had tried from some manufacturers were rubbish.

Anyway what is this doing under TT120? Sam was testing an OO loco with a HM7000 decoder, it either should be under General, HM7000 or DCC. It has nothing to do with TT120. Mod Edit: TT120 is where the thread started.

I watched that video and your analysis was totally unfair. To those of use that convert locos to DCC it was pretty obvious what he did, red and black to track, orange and grey to motor. Easy when you know how. As to insulation he doesn't need to, other than the bit that touches the motor, the body is plastic. In fact with insulation you have to extremely careful because of heat dissipation. As to slinging the "stay alive" under the chassis what is the issue it is insulated and he used the LaisDCC so it fits. On the subject of insulation how do you know what he had done it was all wrapped up. I must admit I would have done it much neater but he was just trying it out, to prove that it could be done. As to the loco I thought he was quite positive about it, it is what it is. I have done the same with two of my old locos, admittedly with Zimo non sound decoders and LaisDCC. It converts a rubbish loco into something quite useful. So please stop being so negative, you obviously don't like him but leave you responses to facts. At the end of the day if it encourages someone with little money to invest in a cheap loco, so where is the harm, Hornby is never going to sell those locos to true modellers. As to profile, or course Hornby aren't going to provide a profile, they don't even add a DCC socket in these locos. His attitude is the 0-4-0 is a current Hornby product so why no profile, simple logical question. They probably make more profit on these locos than the more detailed ones, so they need to sell more.

If you watch Sam's latest video he actually fits a LaisDCC "stay alive" to an HM7000 decoder and it works properly. That does explain a lot, sadly I was not brave enough to do it, but that does explain why I couldn't find any differences in the circuits.

Absolutely correct, that is why I used to pre order with Hornby. I may be wrong but unless we get hyper inflation and Accurascale and Cavalex go bust, Hornby is probably at the limit with what they can charge. At the moment unless it is something you obviously can't do without, then wait for the bargain basement. Yes I ordered a Black 5 at that discount price, I thought at the time that Hornby had miscalculated.

Who knows? Accountants are very good at manipulating accounts, MRON and Carillion were posting profits just before their amazing crashes. The thing is Hornby is more than model railways.

Remember these are the results up to April, many people like me will have have pre orders under the Hornby club where they got 10% off. For me it was a win/win I got the model at the same price as at a retailer and I basically guaranteed the price if it took two years for them to build it. The trading conditions are totally different now. You don't get 10% for being a member and I doubt the price will go up much, unless they don't want to sell anything. What little pre orders I have now, are with Retailers. So basically they may well be looking at the lag in the system because most of the new locos they are selling, other than their bargain basement sale, will have been ordered when members got the 10% off.

Generally the two outside wires are the track, two inside are to the motor. I can't be more precise with the track as Hornby change it dependant on the orientation of the plug. If the cutout in the connector faces the loco, looking from the loco farthest left is track right, farthest left is track left. Trouble is Hornby are not consistent, so it could be the other way round.

Either way it doesn't matter, most people just want value for money and couldn't care about the rest. To be fair, if they didn't we would be paying ridiculous prices for everyday things. I have a few items preordered with Hornby that I will honour, especially as they are at old prices. I tend to buy most of my locos prefitted with DCC sound, so that dismisses most of Hornby anyway. I just got fed trying to find the space and watching bits drop off, trying to fit DCC.

Not necessarily it all depends what it is, most of it is made by machine so materials has a bit input.

I worked for a small company once, it is a constant headache, because you are small there are not the volumes for purchasing components. So yes they can be lean and mean but they have a lot different issues, finance etc.

So you are comparing a TT:120 with an HO, that is not really a fair comparison. TT is meant to be marketed as a a cheap alternative to OO, well at least that was Simon's original idea. I was comparing the Hornby OO range as that is closest to OO.

Actually that is not much different to the price of a Bachmann class 66 with sound, the Hornby is Railroad so you can't count that, but some of their super detailed diesels if you add decent sound would be getting very close to that figure. My favorite is the class 87, do your figures on that one, limited lighting, plastic pantograph.

In the UK they are considerably more expensive than Accurascale. Cavalex and Dapol. If you then add the extra features you get from Cavalex and Accurascale, things like fully fitted "stay alive" and working metal pantographs, it makes the comparison even worse, but you are entitled to your opinion. I think the engineering on a Roco or Marklin is in a different league, so I expect them to be expensive.

Hornby have had a problem with quality for years. The small vocal minority notice it more than the rest of us do, I notice it when I buy a broken second hand one and figure that it could never have worked properly. The big issue for Hornby is they have jacked their prices up to be the the Rolls Royce of model railways, so people will check every detail to justify spending that much money. Very few people criticise their Railroad Models because everyone, including Sam appreciates that they are built to a price, although the Beatles and Coca Cola stuff (excluding their very nice trams) probably even stretches that view.

I agree with you. The 4 pin tender connector could be an issue if they didn't crimp the pins properly, but generally it is ok. I think they implemented the new design because Dapol did it and they wanted more than 4 connections. I had to take my one apart on my A4 as I got glue in it (putting real coal in the tender and not noticing that there was a leak) and it didn't look like that drawbar was that robust, two many bits relying on plastic which after a couple of years will snap off.

That fault that his model has is a well known one, there is a thread on RMWeb that highlighted it ages ago when they first introduced it. Even Jenny Kirk highlighted that it was an issue, so best not to separate loco from tender. So when he picked it out of the box the two were separate so Hornby definitely shouldn't have packed it like that. PCB edge connectors were pain when I was working in electronics, which is what this is. Yes, it is a pain when you get something that doesn't work and in my case even if it gets sorted (which in this day and age seems to happen less and less) it puts me off buying that product again. As many of you know I used to work in design in the motor industry and the lengths we used to go to for Press release vehicles being perfect were amazing. Then you realise they generally won't give a bad review because they won't get anymore to try out. As one of my bosses once said if you sell someone something duff, you lose that sale plus all their friends and colleagues ones as well. There was a lot wrong with that model, I still have one on order but the lack of a flywheel when other companies provide them is serious, especially when this model was substantially more expensive than its competitors. The hanging PCB again shows a lack of design and possibly an after thought. As he quite rightly said, add your extra features, but not at the expense of the main model design. How do you manage to warp a diecast running board?

I wouldn't buy an Elite unless it was substantially reduced, there are better cheaper solutions. It is good for programming though.

Yes NSE456 you should return it, you shouldn't get this effect on a brand new unit. My Elite exhibits this behaviour but I know the rotary encoders are shot on my one and it is quite old. It is a not a very good idea to have to push the same button as the one you have just rotated, it relies too heavily on the encoder being perfect which it is not.