ColinB

To me it sounds like it is set in Bluetooth mode. Lets go back to basics, have you downloaded the Hornby HM DCC to your smartphone? Next assuming the APP works does the APP find your decoder, when you do a scan. Excuse me if I am telling my Granny to such eggs but to me it sounds like you haven't used the APP.

To be honest programming mode is great as a final check but doing a continuity check between pins and track is probably more useful. I normally do a continuity check with all the locos I have done work to, but in this case the loco was in mint condition so I assumed wrongly that the wiring would be correct.

Ok it sounds like it isn't the decoder, I am assuming you are using the supplied loudspeaker. I have bought about 6 of these so they generally work and I have never had to play around with CVs or volumes. First thing to do is load another profile and see if that makes a difference, it doesn't matter which as you are only using it to test that the profile works. Now the other thing is those speakers are useless without a surround so have you inserted the speaker into a sound box made from the plastic spur parts supplied. Finally it could be that there is something wrong with your 21 pin socket on your loco. Unlike the 8 pin the speaker connections come out to the 21 pin connector on pins 9 and 10 (pins vertically above the missing pin), there could be a short across pins 9 and 10 which has damaged the decoder and any other decoder you fit. Finally if you have another loco with a 21 pin socket, test it on that. What I normally do is test it with a normal DCC decoder something like a LaisDCC that is cheap and if you blow it up you haven't lost much. It is a good way to check that there isn't a fault with the 21 pin socket. A good idea is to invest in a DCC decoder tester it solves all the issues of working out if it is the decoder or the loco.

I use one of those Peco track cleaners or an ink rubber, not too abrasive to take away too much metal but good enough to remove the oxide that collects. We used to use the same technique on gold edge connectors on PCBs where you cannot afford to remove too much gold. I use the Dapol track cleaner, there are are few issues with it. On mine the pickups were terrible so I had to rewire them. Then it is not really heavy enough, cured by adding weight but the really big issue I found was it stops working on dirty track what a surprise. Now if you run DCC this is easy to cure. Put "stay alive" in the pulling loco, in my case use Accurascale class 37 on DCC, then run the cleaner on DCC with "stay alive" then it works really well.

The first thing to check is that the loco makes good contact with the track. The other thing I have noticed, is if it is going to program properly you should hear a relay in the Elite click two or three times ( depending on the decoder). The next thing is if someone has added some types of "stay alive" that can stop it programming. Finally on some old types of decoder they just seem to fail to program. I could list all the ones I have had issues with but this is probably not the place to do. The makes I have less issues with are Zimo and Train o Matic, the newer Hornby ones seem to be ok.

The trouble with the Hornby decoders is they don't have a very high current rating 0.5 verses 0.8 amp for a Zimo and Train o Matic. The 0.5 amp might be a bit marginal for one of these motors. The Hornby decoder is also usually more expensive that the ones I quoted.

I did have this happen on a TTS, I only noticed it was that badly distorted when I bought another one off Amazon because they were doing a deal. I eventually sent it back to Hornby for a replacement. Normally it is the speaker, or as I found with HM7000 the supply voltage not being high enough but there is some electronics that can go wrong.

I converted my one to DCC. I used a 6 pin Pecket socket (allows you to easily swap back to DC) and a Zimo MX616 decoder. The MX616 decoder is not around at the moment so you might need to use a MN170. Alternatively there is a Train O Matic 6 pin decoder that works well. I did find that with some six pin decoders they didn't work very well with the motor, the ones I suggested do. The other thing I added was the LaisDCC "Stay alive" which helped a lot. The big thing to remember if you use "Stay Alive" on the Train O Matic there is a CV you have to set to make it work properly. On the Zimo there is a CV but its default is set at 30 seconds whereas the Train O Matics is set to a lot less than a second.

I was doing some more checking on these. Did you know that they are not DCC ready? My big question is (I am thinking of buying one) is there enough room inside to fit a small six pin decoder and LaisDCC "Stay Alive".

I have the original Airfix one and they are definitely needed on that one just to drive the loco. I removed them as with effectively only one pickup, it meant it might run better. When I was doing my search I think I read that Hornby had changed the pickups to make it run better. This is definitely one that can be enhanced by adding "stay alive" to make it run better, even though some guy on RMWeb says that this is a bodge to compensate for bad track design (I don't agree with him).

This is just for information to help others out. I recently purchased a Duchess of Lancaster off EBay. When it arrived it was perfect, obviously never been run. Anyway I put in my old DCC decoder to check it worked and no movement at all. So I then did all the checks that I would do on one I have modified. On this loco there was a huge lump of solder between pins 8 and 7. When I went to the loco it had the little PCB that connects the 4 way lead to the tender with the pickups and motor in the loco. On later locos Hornby dispensed with this and just wired directly. The wiring to the PCB was completely wrong, motor wired to tender pickup. Obviously on DC it worked perfectly but for DCC normally a decoder killer. Surprisingly after I had rewired the loco as per Hornby's latest specification (soldering to the PCB was too fiddly) the decoder still worked which I am amazed at, normally faulty pickup wiring kills the decoder. I remember reading that there was a batch where Hornby got the wiring completely wrong so this must have been one of them. So don't assume that when the loco is advertised as DCC Ready and is about circa 2014 that it will work with DCC. It was an old loco, old Hornby regime so no reflection on their current range of locos.

Hornby have always done that of late, I saved even more on Evening Star, that was the main reason in my case for preordering.

I am sure that is wrong it has got to be a duff motor, I have one of these, admittedly from when they were first released and it seems ok. I have never taken mine apart to look at the motor. I think in this case it may be a call to Hornby Customer Services.

Yes I did report it on a class 66 if I remember rightly, it shorted out and took the decoder with it. I think on most of the newer models the circuitry is on the DC header. If I am converting an old model to DCC, I remove them but if the loco is brand new I don't touch them. I think on that class 66, Hornby were using a cheap load of capacitors, there were a lot that failed at the time.

It may well be that Bachmann has easy access to spare parts because they make them but at the end of the day that has to be one of your business decisions. Hornby doesn't see this as a required service, otherwise they would source them. There is a post on RMWeb of someone that bought a HD Sir Nigel Gresley where that new drawbar is broken, he is being told that it will take a while for Hornby to source a replacement drawbar part. We are talking about a £300 plus loco, if it was a £20 special I could understand. If Kader were to fold the profitable parts of the business would be sold off.

Jadlam have them, the rest I looked at, have them on preorder. It only seems Rails and Hornby are out of stock.

I know, what I didn't add was a Hornby drawbar probably wouldn't have broken although I am not so sure about the new ones they are fitting. As to the profit and losses trouble is it very difficult to work out what is going on. The firm I used to work for was always yoyoing from profit to loss, when we made a loss, travel was stopped as was overtime, generally we spent more saving money. I think Bachmann is the same as Hornby in that they have fingers in many pies, plus China has taken a lot longer to come out of Covid so who knows. Hornby on the other hand seems to have gone flat out getting models released, in the last 3 months I have been deluged by pre ordered items whereas previously they only released very few.

Lets hope Hornby don't take over Bachmann. Yesterday I noticed my Caledonian 812s drawbar was damaged so I mailed Bachmann for a replacement and a buffer for my class 90 at about 6.00 pm last night. Remember the 812 was a Rails special product. This morning I got a really pleasant reply giving me the part numbers and how to order them. With Hornby replies are generally counted in days rather than hours and usually they don't hold many spare parts. The World is in near recession so many businesses will be loosing money, so Bachmann has lost £18m, I think Hornby's is a lot more even with their slight profit last year. As to the price of locos, well normally you charge what the market can stand, it looks like in several cases both Hornby and Bachmann got that calculation quite wrong.

I am not surprised, I have had so many issues with decoders not driving the motor properly. I tend to stick to Zimo or Train o Matic ones.

Yes, LCD screens don't work very well at low temperatures although my laptop seems to survive in the loft ( I use a laptop to control my layout ).

My one stayed on the startup screen indefinitely. I cleared the app from the screen (left hand button on Samsung) and restarted the App it was then ok. I did not in this case deinstall the App.

The cutting out got improved with V2 software but either you have a loco with lots of pickups or fit a powerbank.

I think it is a LokSound one, I must admit I have never checked.

I am surprised it didn't blow up the decoder. You obviously didn't do the continuity check between adjacent pins with a multimeter. Those old Hornby PCBs are terrible for that.

Mine did that when it got confused. If you use a bluetooth app it will scan all the devices and give you the address remove the colons ( I think it used colons as separators) and that is the address. With mine the HM7000 App had got itself in a mess. In the end deleted the App and reloaded it. From my experience they needs to be a ton more work done on the error handling for the HM7000 app. I got the same as you when I tried updating the software in a HM7000 and I did nothing different to all the other times I update a device. In the end deleted the App and reloaded it and it sorted itself out.