ColinB

There was a thread on the extra 2 pin connector on the Hornby Dublo A4 Sir Nigel Gresley. As far as I know nobody ever responded to what it was for. As to speakers I use Road and Rails ones, they sell a very thin one that fits well and sounds really good. An HD loco is no different to a normal A4 made by Hornby, except the Railroad varieties (different tender and DCC fitting). The new HD Sir Nigel Gresley has a different drawbar with integrated pcb so I assume the tender bottom is different, I haven't taken mine apart yet to check. Because these tenders are long there is plenty of room for the decoder plus bass speaker, just avoid the front where the coal bunker slopes and the extreme back where the tender top dips.

Interesting post I have only just read it. To anyone that is not a Hornby disciple it is not a great surprise. They had that great year during Covid but generally model railways is not that popular. Hornby have also invested in new products, one the HM7000 has not been a roaring success basically because of it being late to the market. Their tier system alienated a lot of the Retailers and you only have to look at the Retailer Sales to realise things are not moving as well as they should be. So introducing a new set of Retailers I don't think is going to improve things. Then we have the hap hazard way new models reach the market, nobody knows when they are going to arrive. Ok for the die hard Hornby lovers, they will wait, for others they will find something else to spend their money on. They are just my thoughts.

I suppose it is lucky for Accurascale that it is model railways, any other business that is not good for a successful business model. It must give their finance people many sleepless nights.

It is not surprising, a TT120 loco costs about as much as an OO model to produce. When I complain about the price I get a deluge of replies telling me that they are good value, so I don't bother saying anything anymore. The OO models costs seem to be 10% above the other Manufacturers. Trouble is there is a point when people don't buy them anymore and looking at the bargains I have obtained in sales lately, I wonder whether it is closer than we think.

2015 seems late for Mazak rot, which is worrying. I have just bought a second hand chassis off Peters Spares for £2.50 (I was building an 0-6-0 out of bits) so replacement at least is not expensive. The only issue is that Peters Spares only has the sprung 3rd axle type.

It sounds like you know what you are doing and if you say there is no AC going to the rectifier then it sounds like the secondary of the transformer has a fault. These old transformers tend to have a variable resistor wound round an asbestos core, for that reason I would leave well alone. I have in the past removed all the old internals and replaced them with modern equivalents but that is probably going to cost more than buying another one.

I bought this loco second hand, probably because it kept derailing for the previous owner. Now I know I fixed the issue I think by adding a spring to the front bogie. I will check next time I am in the loft. I either did that or replaced it with an A3 front bogie.

Right I will have to be careful, last time I got sin binned. It is very easy to blame external influences but generally for your product to be a success you need to design for worse case. My phone reliably updates itself anywhere there is WiFi, it even did it in the Foyer of my old office while I was waiting to take a colleague for a drink. For a start listening to a lot of the feedback on this site I don't think the programming app has a retry strategy if a download block gets corrupted. I don't know how you guys test the product but perhaps you should test to see how easy it is to get it to fail. Sadly I am going to use an example you are going to hate, just like Sam does.

Well Peachy thank you for a frank explanation of your issues. I don't think you wasted your money, hopefully Hornby will get it right in the end. You still have a sound decoder which I assume will work perfectly happily on DCC. The worrying thing is that a lot of the faults you are seeing are pretty basic, so I do wonder why nobody else is noticing them but that is not so unusual. As a matter of interest how many locos are you running with the HM7000, I assume it is not just one.

I know SteveM6, as I said we covered it before.

We have been through this subject before, model railways seems a bit unique where a manufacturer announces a model for it not to appear until 3 years later. I know of no other industry that gets away with it. Hornby every January brings out the new catalogue of which few items will be released in that calendar year . Even Bachmann has dispensed with the concept. Trouble is it isn't that good an idea for Hornby, all us seasoned buyers know that if we order from Hornby the price is fixed, so if during the 3 year development cycle the price of raw materials rises or Hornby have an expensive production slot, then they Hornby are stuffed.

Look 96RAF the released version doesn't, the version you are testing probably does. At the current moment the general public cannot download it, so it does not work with Android. When I worked on engine management, by your definition all those prototype vehicles I tested were available to the general public, which obviously they weren't. One day Hornby will release it as an Android App then it will meet the definition of working.

I assume some model shops do charge up front but generally with a lot of Hornby locos it is better to buy from them. They have so many price rises that ordering from Hornby is the only way you get it for the price quoted. I must admit though I do think Hornby have reached the limit at the moment for a model loco they are generally more expensive than the competition. As to the delay yes it really annoys me which is why I was shocked when they released the HM7000 before the release date with it not meeting the initial requirements (we all now know it doesn't at this moment in time work with Android). RDS Mod Note: Your post has been edited crossing out parts that are completely incorrect, as 96RAF states below. I have also removed completely your efforts to show Hornby in a bad light. I suggest you are very very careful with any future postings.

Just an update. I bought a cheap chassis off EBay as a spare so I thought I would order X6171 to see if it fits. Yes it does, I will build the rest later to see if the gearing is right.

I pre ordered some of these and they got delivered. I don't think they had many as I am sure I ordered two packs and only got one. Yes they are are a much better product than the Hunt couplings. I first saw them on a carriage I ordered. That is what really annoys me about Hornby come up with something really good and then don't make enough. It is not as if they are locos that cost a lot to produce. It seems to be a philosophy from the 1960s where you try and engineer a shortage.

I must admit I was going to buy them from a model shop so I can see what I am getting. I am off to York in a few weeks time for a holiday where there are decent model shops and of course TMC, which we don't have around here. Thank you for the advice though.

They just flaked off when I rubbed them. Shame was the ones they had used were totally out of scale, so I assumed that the originals would be underneath. Sadly not the case, so I will have to find some new ones the right size.

Great thanks for your help. I will try it with the cotton bud first. As far as I can see there is no varnish.

I have just bought a second hand A1/A3 loco. Someone has put the later British Rail transfers over the originals on the tender. They are huge. I assume they are so huge as to cover the originals. It looks like they didn't varnish them, so if I put the tender top in a bowl of water will they just slide off.

If I remember from my car radio audio days, the audio guys (I was responsible for the digital interface) used to be very concerned about powering up the audio stage properly. If you didn't you got an initial "POP", so your "POP" is perfectly normal. If it were a car radio or an expensive sound system, people would complain bitterly but it is not so not an issue. It makes no difference to the sound.

Actually, I think you will find his previous job was at Paperchase, Ladbrokes was a bit earlier.

I am going to state the obvious which will offend a few people, have Hornby not heard of stickers. I think in the old days Wrenn and Triang used to do it, even a lot of modern companies do it. Once you know it is wrong, which you must because production doesn't do anything without a request, put a sticker over the 21 pin printed label which says 8 pin. The original person that posted this request is the second person to buy the wrong decoder because they relied on the printed label, there must be more.

Just got a post from a guy on RMWEB his has also got an 8 pin socket, so it looks like they got it wrong. Probably ran out of 21 pin PCBs not good for the customer though.

Thanks Brewman I just assumed that was the decoder he was referring to, I should have checked. I did say I might have missed it, I just assumed he would have said it was an 8F. That one shouldn't be an issue standard motor, any proper 8 pin decoder should work. I wish I knew why some decoders do exactly what he is describing, it has happened to me a lot of times.

Now look Fishmanoz if I had said that about you I would be in danger of violating the rules, so please leave it out. Now this is the text on the subject "I have one of these locos, purchased from new and finally I would like to convert it to DCC. I live in the US so I was trying decoders over here, so Hornby decoders are not easily available, I got 2 Digitrax decoders and both are 8 pin and when I install them, there is a small hint of smoke from the loco. It is perfect in DC mode, there is nothing from the motor, it only happens when I connect a DCC decoder to the loco. I am reaching out to see if anyone has one of these locos and if so, does it work with any other decoder other than Hornby? I am trying to avoid if possible getting one shipped from the UK. If I have to get one, I just have to get one. I could look at converting to DCC sound if anyone has advice or an quick how to as I assume I would have to wire to the tender for the speaker." So where does it mention loco type, it mentions using a Black 5 TTS in the subsequent text and as I said in my response in the first line, if you would care to read it again, that I might have missed the loco type. Unlike many people on this site I have used very many decoders when I started some were good some were not very good. The ones I found were the best were Zimo, LaisDCC (surprisingly) and Hornby (if you were careful with them), so I thought that knowledge would be useful. I was trying to work out what motor they were using as you probably know it makes a huge difference to decoder choice. If you also read my response properly I was trying to help the guy out. To be quite honest I am beginning to tire of this site and the whole Model Railway community, I think a previous response by another member ion another subject s probably true. Fortunately there are some good guys on this site "Going Spare" being a prime example giving useful advice. Now do I get an apology?