ColinB

Look can we get one thing straight the TTS has nothing to do with the original recording it is a derived digitisation. I may have said you could convert a TTS format to the new format but I also said that there wasn't enough data to get a decent sound. So can forget about TTS and focus on the original recording, so you are saying that the original recording is not good enough for your new system, so that says that it is never going to happen because as someone said there are no examples on preserved railways. As to the devs, they are wrong you can convert TTS to TXS if you really wanted it is just the quality would not be there, all you do is run the loco with TTS and record it or the alternative do a bit of digital processing on the original file. How do you think they made CDs from old Beatles recordings or colour films from original black and white ones. So yes you can do it. I really do wonder where you guys get your information.

Look SteveM6 at fear of repeating myself to make a sound decoder you have to have an original recording to be able to digitise. So if Hornby made a TTS decoder for it then somewhere they had an original recording. You go out take a load of recordings, or if the loco is no longer around look for old recordings. You then pass that through a digitising process to produce a file which then gets converted to the necessary ones and noughts to fit in the processor memory. Nowadays it gets a bit mudded because I doubt many people record in analogue but the digital recordings they take would be far too large to fit in the memory. Then you have the issue that you have got to chop the sounds up into separate chunks for all the functions. So as I have said many times before somewhere they must have an original recording or a derived recording for different archived sounds. Of course they may have lost the original recording they had.

I will comment on my experience. If you are soldering connections to a PCB or a motor generally solder containing flux is perfectly ok. If you are soldering to track I found using flux the solder flows quicker which avoids the plastic sleepers underneath the rail from melting, without the flux it seems to take longer for the solder to melt even with the flux impregnated solder. Finally if you are doing fine soldering like a surface mounted component to a PCB we found that you need special flux, but I doubt most people will be soldering microprocessors to printed circuit boards (PCB). If you think about it, flux stops oxide forming so if it only flows when the solder melts, the job has already oxidised so a separate application of flux avoids this. Bakers fluid is what I used to use on motorbike cables to solder so I imagine it must contain flux, if I remember rightly it is liquid rather than a paste, so probably not that suitable as to it attacking nickel silver I imagine it is acidic to clean up the joint but you won't be using that much, but it is more practical to use flux.

Well they did make a TTS sound decoder for that model so they got that from somewhere. If you use a Brit I imagine the whistle will be wrong and I don't think a Brit had the chain driven valve gear although I don't know if that makes a difference to the sound. I must admit I am surprised there isn't one seeing as they did one for TTS.

Great and I ordered a HM7000 specifically for my original Clan Class. I will have to use the rebuilt one. Thanks for the answer though.

Here are some photos

It is the opposite to way you would normally think. The blue common wire is actually the positive connection, the negative is supplied by the decoder switching Aux1 to Ground. So positive goes to the pin 16, negative goes to Aux 1. Don't forget the resistor, it can go either side of the LED, so between the positive terminal of the LED and pin 16 or the negative side of the LED and Aux1.

So when does the unrebuilt one appear? I can't find it in the list.

Well I have just converted two old Lima HSTs using the PCBs I got off EBay and I didn't have to do anything to the front lenses. Now if you have the Hornby HST before they adopted the Lima body/chassis then you have to do something to the lenses. You may be wondering how come I have done so many conversions on old HSTs. Well I had a 1980s Hornby HST, so I decided to upgrade it by buying the new Hornby chassis and bogies. I then found out that the old Hornby body doesn't fit the new Hornby chassis as the new Hornby chassis is derived from the Lima chassis, so I put the original Hornby back to original with a 5 pole motor and bought some Lima bodies to fit the new chassis. So seeing as R1230M is basically the old Lima model with Hornby upgrades, I suspect you don't have to anything to the lens.

I notice there is a sound profile for a Merchant Navy available. Which one is this original or rebuilt? As Hornby produces separate TTS decoders for the different locos, I assume they sound different to each other.

Yes, that loco does not have lights and you won't damage anything.

If it is a steam engine without lights just turn the decoder round in the socket. Perhaps when they wired up the DCC socket they got the wires mixed up. Unless of course they wired up the decoder wrong which I very much doubt.

I know 96RAF, for once we agree, I have 3 of them and they all just unclip. When this was first posted I checked on all of them. On the class 47 you have to remove the buffers.

The Stanier tender this loco uses hasn't changed much in the last 10 years, it should have a decent weight the DCC socket, screws to it. Most points are generally raised especially if they have a plastic frog, it is probably the travel on the drawbar pin. Previously Hornby allowed quite a lot of travel as I noticed today fixing a Hornby original build Clan Class but of late on new models there is virtually no travel at all.

I have to admit this is a bit unusual these tenders are very good. I will go through the things it could be from my experience. Turn the tender over and check all the axles are in the their slots by gently pressing on them, sometimes they don't clip in properly. Check the spacing on the tender wheels, if this is out it can cause derailments. On my Coronation which is effectively the same loco I have issues with the front bogie where it didn't have enough travel, so to check this remove and run the loco to check if it still derails. The drawbars on these are usually pretty good but another issue I have had is where there is not enough travel on the drawbar, Hornby don't seem to understand that it travels up and down. To check this loosen the screw on the tender side of the drawbar, obviously you can't do this permanently but do it just to check it and run the loco and see if it derails. I quite often have to fit a screw/bolt with a longer shoulder in this case (you get them off EBay, via China). Then finally I assume this one doesn't have the new Hornby drawbar so check that the wires aren't getting snagged on the drawbar.

That explains a lot.

I build lots of locos from bits and am always converting from dcc socket in loco to dcc socket in tender. So generally I check the direction against a new one from Hornby and if wrong, swap the motor connections round. Trouble with CVs, reset the decoder and your CVs get set back to default.

So where was the resistor in the decoder or on the loco?

I suspect my one was a lot older than that. That date fits in with when asbestos was no longer fitted to brake shoes. I think they had been slowly phasing it out before that date.

Isn't this the same system Hattons used on their class 66? I remember having to buy a 10 function decoder for my one. Looking at my function table for my class 37 there are 9 functions available for switching on the lights. 2 for F0, F17, F18, F19, F20, F21, F22, F23. It lists 14 AUX plus 2 for front and rear light, but I assume these are internal to the ESU device depending on loco direction unless there is a command on DCC to drive AUX functions.

I see LMSFan72, pins 5 and 6 are defined as clock and data it is similar to how we used to do things when we ran out of pins. So a good move to buy it with sound fitted. So where did you find this information? I just assumed they did it like Bachmann and Dapol, either way an HM7000 is not going to work.

Either way whether it is "Plug in" or on a harness it should program that is something to do with the electronics. I must admit I rewired anything with 4 pin because it is Hornby unique, but looking at the photo the outer wires are supply, the inner wires motor. So basically you can plug it in upside down and it should still work it will just drive backwards. As I said in my first post it is a replacement fix. Personally I would rewire it as a six pin if your skills are up to that, then your choice of replacements improves dramatically. The easiest way I have found to do it is buy a Pecket DCC socket which is 6 pin and the PCB is a decent improvement to the loco.

I was just pointing out that you have to be careful with this old stuff and as I said before you are better off with a more modern controller.

Thanks Rana for backing me up. I used to think like Yelrow until my wife caught it, I worked in the auto industry but had nothing to do with brakes so I just don't know where she got it. I just like to make people aware of the issues. To be honest unless you are running Wrenn locos, the unsmoothed voltages those give out could cause issues with locos that have leds as lights which a lot of modern locos have.

You don't have to, the dust comes out of the cooling vents. The rheostat that controls the speed on mine was wound on an asbestos bandage, it used to be the thing when I first started in electronics. If you are happy with it then no issue, just pointing out the possible risk. My wife died of Mesothelioma, without having any known contact with asbestos, so I avoid anything with asbestos like the plague.